Civilization And Its Discontents

THE INTERNATIONAL
PSYCHO - ANALYTICAL
LIBRARY

EDITED BY ERNEST JONES

No. 17

THE INTERNATIONAL PSVCHaANALYTICAL LIBRARY
Na 17

CIVILIZATION

AND ITS DISCONTENTS

SIGM. FREUD, M.D., LL.D.

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
m

JOAN RIVIERE

PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT THE
HOGARTH PRESS, 52 TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.
AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS

MCMXXX

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

My grateful thanks are due to Fraulein Anna
Freud, Dr. Ernest Jones and Mr. James
Strachey for their careful revision of the MS.
of this translation and the many improvements
they made in it, and also to Miss Ethel Colburn
Mayne for her translations of the verse quoted.

I

T he impression forces itsdf upon one that
men measime by false standards, that
everyone seeks power, success, riches for
himself and admires others who attain them,
while undervaluing the truly precious things in
life. And yet, in making any general judgement of
this kind one is in danger of forgetting the mani-
fold variety of humanity and its mental life.
There are certain men from whom their contem-
poraries do not withhold veneration, although
their greatness rests on attributes and achieve-
ments which are completely foreign to the aims
and ideals of the multitude. One might well be
inclined to suppose that after all it is only a
minority who appreciate these great men, while
the majority cares nothing for them. But the
discrepancy between men’s opinions and their
behaviour is so wide and their desires so many-
sided that things are probably not so simple.

One of these exceptional men calls himself my
friend in his letters to me. I had sent him my

7

8 CIVILIZATION AAD ITS DISCONTENTS

little book which treats of religion as an illusion,
and he answered that he agreed entirely with my
views on religion, but that he was sorry I had not
properly appreciated the ultimate source of re-
ligious sentiments. This consists in a peculiar feel-
ing, which never leaves him personally, which he
finds shared by many others, and which he may
suppose millions more also experience. It is a
feeling which he would like to call a sensation of
* eternity ’, a feeling as of something limitless, un-
bounded, something ‘ oceanic ’. It is, he sa}^, a
purely subjective experience, not an article of
belief ; it implies no assurance of personal im-
mortality, but it is the source of the religious
spirit and is taken hold of by the various
Churches and religious systems, directed by them
into definite channels and also, no doubt, used up
in them. One may rightly call oneself religious
on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even
though one reject all beliefs and all illusions.

These views, expressed by my friend whom I
so greatly honour and who himself once in poetry
described the magic of illusion, put me in a diffi-
cult position. I cannot discover this ' oceanic '
feeling in mysdf . It is not easy to deal scientific-
ally with feelings. One may attempt to describe
their physiological signs. Where that is impos-

dVILIZATlON AND ITS DISCONTENTS 9

sible — I am afraid the oceanic feeling, too, will defy
this kind of classification — nothing remains but
to turn to the ideational content which most
readily associates itself with the feeling. If I have
understood my friend aright, he means the same
thing as that consolation offered by an original
and somewhat unconventional writer to his hero,
contemplating suicide; ‘Out of this world we can-
not fall So it is a feeling of indissoluble con-
nection, of belonging inseparably to the external
world as a whole. To me, personally, I may
remark, this seems something more in the nature
of an intellectual judgement, not, it is true, with-
out any accompanying feeling-tone, but with one
of a kind which characterizes other equally far-
reaching reflections as well. I could not in my
own person convince myself of the primary nature
of such a feeling. But I cannot on that account
deny that it in fact occurs in other people. One
can only wonder whether it has been correctly
interpreted and whether it is entitled to be
acknowledged as the fans et origo of the whole
need for religion.

I have nothing to suggest which could effect-
ively settle the solution of this problem. The idea

1 Christian Grabbe. Hamnibal : * }a, aus dor Welt wetden wir
nicht fallen. Wir sind darin.‘

10 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

that man should receive intimation of his connec-
tion with the surrotmding world by a direct feeling
whidi aims from the outset at serving this purpose
sounds so strange and is so incongruous with the
structure of our psychology that one is justified
in attempting a psycho-anal3dic, that is, genetic
explanation of such a feeling. Whereupon the
following lin^ of thought present themsdves.
Normally there is nothing we are more certain of
than the feeling of our self, our own ego. It seems
to us an independent unitary thing, sharply out-
lined against everything else. That this is a de-
ceptive appearance, and that on the contrary the
ego extends inwards, without any sharp delimita-
tion, into an imconsdous mental entity which we
call the id and to which it forms a fa9ade, was first
discovered by psycho-analytic research, and the
latter still has much to tdl us about the rdations
of the ego to the id. But towards the outer world
at any rate the ego seems to keep itself clearly and
sharply outlined and delimited. There is only one
state of mind in which it fails to do this — an un-
usual state, it is true, but not one that can be
judged as pathological. At its height the state
of being in love threatens to obliterate the boirnd-
aries between ego and object. Against all the
evidence of his senses the man in love declares

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS II

that he and his beloved are one, and is prepared
to behave as if it were a fact. A thing that can be
temporarily effaced by a ph3rsiological function
must also of course be liable to disturbance by
morbid processes. From pathology we have come
to know a large number of states in which the
boundary lines between ego and outer world be-
come uncertain, or in which they are actually
incorrectly perceived — cases in which parts of a
man’s own body, even component parts of his own
mind, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, appear to him
alien and not belonging to himself ; other cases in
which a man ascribes to the external world things
that clearly originate in himself, and that ought
to be acknowledged by him. So the ego’s cogniz-
ance of itself is subject to disturbance, and the
boxmdaries between it and the outer world are
not immovable.

Further reflection shows that the adult’s sense
of his own ego cannot have been the same from the
beginning. It must have undergone a develop-
ment, which naturally cannot be demonstrated,
but which admits of reconstruction with a fair
degree of probability .» When the infant at the
breast receives stimuli, he cannot as yet distinguish

^ Cf. the considenible volume of work on thie topic dating
from that of Ferencci (* Stages in the Development of the Sense of
Reality 1913) up to Fedem’s contributions, 1936, 1927 and later.

12

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

whether they come from his ^o or from the outer
world. He learns it gradually as the result of
various exigencies. It must make the strongest
impression on him that many sources of excita-
tion, which later on he will recognize as his own
bodily organs, can provide him at any time with
sensations, whereas others become temporarily out
of his reach — amongst these what he wants most
of all, his mother’s breast— and reappear only as
a result of his cries for help. Thus an ‘object’
first presents itself to the ego as something existing
‘ outside ’, which is only induced to appear by a
particular act. A further stimulus to the growth
and formation of the ego, so that it becomes some-
thing more than a bimdle of sensations, i.e. recog-
nizes an ‘ outside ’, the external world, is afforded
by the frequent, unavoidable and manifold pains
and unpleasant sensations which the pleasure-
principle, still in vmrestricted domination, bids it
abolish or avoid. The tendency arises to dissociate
from the ego everything which can give rise to
pain, to cast it out and create a pure pleasure-ego,
in contrast to a threatening ‘ outside ’, not-self.
The limits of this primitive pleasure-ego cannot
escape readjustment through experience. Much
that the individual wants to retain because it is
pleasure-giving is nevertheless part not of the ego

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I3

but of an object ; and much that he wishes to eject
because it torments him yet proves to be insepar-
able from the ego, arising from an inner source.
He learns a method by which, through deliberate
use of the sensory organs and suitable muscular
movements, he can distinguish between internal
and external — ^what is part of the ego and what
originates in the outer world — and thus he makes
the first step towards the introduction of the
reality-principle which is to control his develop-
ment further. This capacity for distinguishing,
which he learns, of course, serves a practical pur-
pose, that of enabling him to defend himself
against painful sensations felt by him or threaten-
ing him. Against certain painful excitations from
within the ego has only the same means of defence
as that employed against pain coming from with-
out, and this is the starting-point of important
morbid disturbances.

In this way the ego detaches itself from the
external world. It is more correct to say: Origin-
ally the ego includes everything, later it detaches
from itself the external world. The ego-feeling we
are aware of now is thus only a shrunken vestige
of a far more extensive feeling — a feeling which
embraced the universe and expressed an inseparable
connection of the ego with the external world. If

14 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

we may suppose that this primary ^o-feeling has
been preserved in the minds of many people — ^to a
greater or lesser extent — ^it would co-exist like a
sort of counterpart with the narrower and more
sharply outlined ego-feeling of maturity, and the
ideational content belonging to it would be precisely
the notion of limitless extension and oneness with
the universe — ^the same feeling as that described by
my friend as ‘ oceanic But have we any right to
assume that the original type of feeling survives
alongside the later one which has developed from it?

Undoubtedly we have : there is nothing unusual
in such a phenomenon, whether in the psychological
or in other spheres. Where animals are concerned
we hold the view that the most highly developed
have arisen from the lowest. Yet we still find all
the simple forms alive to-day. The great saurians
are extinct and have made way for the mammals,
but a typical representative of them, the crocodile,
is stiU living among us. The analogy may be too
remote, and it is also weakened by the fact that the
surviving lower species are not as a rule the true
ancestors of the present-day more hig hl y developed
types. The intermediate members have mostly
died out and are known to us only through recon-
struction. In the realm of mind, on the other hand,
the primitive type is so commonly preserved along-

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I5

side the transfonnations which have developed
out of it that it is superfluous to give instances in
proof of it. When this happens, it is usually the
result of a bifurcation in development. One quan-
titative part of an attitude or an impulse has
survived unchanged while another has undergone
further development.

This brings us very dose to the more general
problem of conservation in the mind, which has so
far hardly been discussed, but is so interesting and
important that we may take the opportunity to
pay it some attention, even though its relevance is
not immediate. Since the time when we recognized
the error of supposing that ordinary forgetting
signified destruction or annihilation of the memory-
trace, w:e have been inclined to the opposite view
that nothing once formed in the mind could ever
perish, that everything survives in some way or
other, and is capable under certain conditions of
being brought to light again, as, for instance, when
regression extends back far enough. One might
try to picture to oneself what this assumption
signifies by a comparison taken from another field.
Let us choose the history of the Eternal City as an
example.! Historians tell us that the oldest Rome

* According to The Cambridge Ancient History, voL vii , 1928.
* The Founding of Rome *, by Hugh Last.

l6 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

of all was the Roma quadrata, a fenced settlement
on the Palatine. Then followed the phase of the
Septimontium, when the colonies on the different
hills united together; then the town which was
bounded by the Servian wall; and later still,
after all the transformations in the periods of the
republic and the early Caesars, the city which
the Emperor Aurelian enclosed by his walls. We
will not follow the changes the city went through
any further, but will ask ourselves what traces
of these early stages in its history a visitor to
Rome may still find to-day, if he goes equipped
with the most complete historical and topo-
graphical knowledge. Except for a few gaps,
he will see the wall of Aurelian almost rm-
changed. He can find sections of the Servian
rampart at certain points where it has been
excavated and brought to light. If he knows
enough — ^more than present-day archaeology — ^he
may perhaps trace out in the structure of the town
the whole course of this wall and the outline of
Roma quadrata. Of the buddings which once
occupied this ancient ground -plan he will find
nothing, or but meagre fragments, for they exist no
longer. With the best information about Rome of
the republican era, the utmost he could achieve
would be to indicate the sites where the temples

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I7

and public buildings of that period stood. These
places are now occupied by ruins, but the ruins are
not those of the early buildings themsdves but of
restorations of them in later times after fires and
demolitions. It is hardly necessary to mention
that all these remains of ancient Rome are found
woven into the fabric of a great metropolis which
has arisen in the last few centuries since the
Renaissance. There is assuredly much that is
ancient still buried in the soil or under the modem
buildings of the town. This is the way in which
we find antiquities surviving in historic cities like
Rome.

Now let us make the fantastic supposition that
Rome were not a human dwelling-place, but a
mental entity with just as long and varied a past
history : that is, in which nothing once constructed
had perished, and all the earlier stages of develop-
ment had survived alongside the latest. This
would mean that in Rome the palaces of the
Caesars were still standing on the Palatine and the
Septizonium of Septimius Severus was still tower-
ing to its old height ; tiiat the beautiful statues were
still standing in the colonnade of the Castle of St.
Angelo, as they were up to its siege by the Goths,
and so on. But more still: where the Palazzo
Caffarelli stands there would also be, without this

l8 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

being removed, the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus,
not merely in its latest form, moreover, as the
Romans of the Caesars saw it, but also in its earliest
shape, when it still wore an Etruscan design and
was adorned with terra-cotta antefixae. Where the
Coliseum stands now we could at the same time
admire Nero’s Golden House ; on the Piazza of the
Pantheon we should find not only the Pantheon of
to-day as bequeathed to us by Hadrian, but on the
same site also Agrippa's original edifice ; indeed,
the same ground would support the church of
Santa Maria sopra Minerva and the old temple over
which it was built. And the observer would need
merely to shift the focus of his eyes, perhaps, or
change his position, in order to call up a view of
either the one or the other.

There is clearly no object in spinning this
fantasy further ; it leads to the inconceivable, or
even to absurdities. If we try to represent his-
torical sequence in spatial terms, it can only be
done by juxtaposition in space ; the same space
will not hold two contents. Our attempt seems
like an idle game ; it has only one justification : it
shows us how far away from mastering the idiosyn-
crasies of mental life we are by treating them in
terms of visual representation.

There is one objection, though, to which we must

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I9

pay attention. It questions our choosing in par-
ticular the past history of a city to liken to the past
of the mind. Even for mental life our assumption
that eveiything past is preserved holds good only
on condition that the organ of the mind remains
intact and its structure has not been injured by
traumas or inflammation. Destructive influences
comparable to these morbid agencies are never
lacking in the history of any town, even if it has
had a less chequered past than Rome, even if, like
London, it has hardly ever been pillaged by an
enemy. Demolitions and the erection of new
buildings in the place of old occur in cities which
have had the most peaceful existence ; therefore a
town is from the outset unsuited for the comparison
I have made of it with a mental organism.

We admit this objection ; we will abandon our
search for a striking eflect of contrast and turn
to what is after all a closer object of comparison,
the body of an animal or human being. But here,
too, we find the same thing. The early stages of
development are in no sense still extant ; they have
been absorbed into the later features for which they
supplied the material. The embryo cannot be
demonstrated in the adult ; the th5mius gland of
childhood is replaced after puberty by connective
tissue, but no longer exists itself ; in the marrow-

20 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

bone of a grown man I can, it is true, trace the out-
line of the childish bone-structiure, but this latter
no longer survives in itself — ^it lengthened and
thickened until it reached its final form. The fact is
that a survival of all the early stages alongside the
final form is only possible in the mind, and that it
is impossible for us to represent a phenomenon of
this kind in visual terms.

Perhaps we are going too far with this con-
clusion. Perhaps we ought to be content with the
assertion that what is past in the mind can survive
and need not necessarily perish. It is alwa)^
possible that even in the mind much that is old
may be so far obliterated or absorbed — ^whether
normally or by way of exception — that it cannot
be restored or reanimated by any means, or that
survival of it is always connected with certain
favourable conditions. It is possible, but we know
nothing about it. We can only be sure that it is
more the rule than the exception for the past to
survive in the mind.

Thus we are entirely willing to acknowledge
that the ‘ oceanic ' feding exists in many people,
and we are disposed to relate it to an early stage
in ego-feeling ; the fxuther question then arises
what claim this feding has to be regarded as the
source of the need for religion.

aVILIZATION AND ITS DISCX)NTENTS 21

To me this claim does not seem very forcible.
Surely a feeling can only be a source of energy
when it is itself the expression of a strong need.
The derivation of a need for religion from the
child’s feeling of helplessness and the longing it
evokes for a father seems to me incontrovertible,
especially since this feeling is not simply carried
on from childhood days but is kept alive per-
petually by the fear of what the superior power of
fate will bring. I could not point to any need in
childhood so strong as that for a father’s protec-
tion. Thus the part played by the ‘ oceanic ’
feeling, which I suppose seeks to reinstate limit-
less narcissism, cannot possibly take the first
place. The derivation of the religious attitude
can be followed back in dear outline as far as
the child’s feeling of hdplessness. There may be
something else behind this, but for the present it
is wrapped in obscurity.

I can imagine that the oceanic feeling could
become connected with religion later on. That
feeling of oneness with the universe which is its
ideational content sounds very like a first attempt
at the consolations of religion, like another way
taken by the ego of denying the dangers it sees
threatening it in the external world. I must again
confess that I find it very difi&cult to work with

22 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

these intangible quantities. Another Mend of
mine, whose insatiable scientific curiosity has im-
pelled him to the most out-of-the-way researches
and to the acquisition of encyclopaedic knowledge,
has assured me that the Yogi by their practices of
withdrawal from the world, concentrating atten-
tion on bodily functions, peculiar methods of
breathing, actually are able to produce new sensa-
tions and diffused feelings in themselves which he
regards as regressions to primordial, deeply buried
mental states. He sees in them a physiological
foundation, so to speak, of much of the wisdom of
m3^ticism. There would be connections to be
made here with many obscure modifications of
mental life, such as trance and ecstasy. But I
am moved to exclaim, in the words of Schiller’s
diver :

Who breathes overhead in the rose-tinted light may
be glad I

II

I N my Future of an Illusion ^ I was concerned
much less with the deepest sources of religious
feeling than with what the ordinary man
understands by his religion, that system of doc-
trines and pledges that on the one hand explains
the riddle of this world to him with an enviable
completeness, and on the other assures him that a
solicitous Providence is watching over him and
will make up to him in a future existence for any
shortcomings in this life. The ordinary man can-
not imagine this Providence in any other form but
that of a greatly exalted father, for only such a
one could xmderstand the needs of the sons of
men, or be softened by their prayers and placated
by the signs of their remorse. The whole thing is
so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality,
that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly
it is painful to think that the great majority of
mortals will never be able to rise above this view
of life. It is even more humiliating to discover

^ 1927. London : Hogarth Press, 1928.

*3

24 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

what a lai:ge number of those alive to-day, who
must see that this religion is not tenable, yet try
to defend it inch by inch, as if with a series of piti-
able rearguard actions. One would like to count
oneself among the believers, so as to admonish
the philosophers who try to pr^rve the God of
religion by substituting for him an impersonal,
shadowy, abstract principle, and say, ‘ Thou shalt
not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain 1 ’
Some of the great men of the past did the same,
but that is no justification for us ; we know why
they had to do so.

We wUl now go back to the ordinary man and
his religion — ^the only religion that ought to bear
the name. The well-known words of one of our
great and wise poets come to mind in which he
expresses his view of the rdation of religion to art
and science. They run :

He who has Sdrace and has Art,

Religion, too. has he ;

Who has not Science, has not Art,

Let him religious be ! *

On the one hand, these words contrast religion
with the two highest achievements of man, and on
the other, they declare that in respect of their
value in life they can represent or replace each

* Goethe, Zahmen Xenten IX (Gedichte aus dem Nachlasa).

CIVIUZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 25

other. If we wish to deprive even the ordinary
man, too, of his religion, we shall clearly not have
the authority of the poet on our side. We will seek
to get in touch with the meaning of his utterance
by a special way. Life as we find it is too hard
for us ; it entails too much pain, too many dis-
appointments, impossible tasks. We cannot do
without palliative remedies. We cannot dispense
with auxiliary constructions, as Theodor Fontane
said. There are perhaps three of these means :
powerful diversions of interest, which lead us to
care little about our misery ; substitutive grati-
fications, which lessen it ; and intoxicating sub-
stances, which make us insensitive to it. Some-
thing of this kind is indispensable.^ Voltaire is
aiming at a diversion of interest when he brings his
Candide to a close with the advice that people
should cultivate their gardens ; scientific work is
another deflection of the same kind. The sub-
stitute gratifications, such as art offers, are illu-
sions in contrast to reality, but none the less
satisf3dng to the mind on that accoimt, thanks to
the place which phantasy has reserved for herself
in mental life. The intoxicating substances affect
our body, alter its chemical processes. It is not

1 W iihrfTTi Busdi, in Dit fromme HOene, says the same
thing on a lower level : ' The man who has cares has brandy
too.’

26 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTCNTS

SO simple to find the place where rehgion belongs
in this series. We must look further afield.

The question, ‘ What is the purpose of human
life ? ’ has been asked times without niunber ; it
has never received a satisfactory answer ; perhaps
it does not admit of such an answer. Many a
questioner has added that if it should appear that
life has no purpose, then it would lose all value for
him. But these threats alter nothing. It looks,
on the contrary, as though one had a right to dis-
miss this question, for it seems to presuppose that
belief m the superiority of the human race with
which we are already so familiar in its other ex-
pressions. Nobody asks what is the purpose of
the lives of animals, unless peradventure they are
designed to be of service to man. But this, too,
will not hold, for with many animals man can do
nothing — except describe, classify and study them ;
and countless species have declined to be put even
to this use, by living and dying and becoming
extinct before men had set eyes upon them. So
again, only religion is able to answer the question
of the purpose of life. One can hardly go wrong
in concluding that the idea of a purpose in life
stands and falls with the religious system.

We will turn, therefore, to the less ambitious
problem, what the behaviour of men themselves

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

reveals as the purpose and object of their lives,
what they demand of life and wish to attain in it.
The answer to this can hardly be in doubt ; they
seek happiness, they want to become happy and
to remain so. There are two sides to this striving,
a positive and a negative ; it aims on the one hand
at eliminating pain and discomfort, on the other
at the experience of intense pleasures. In its
narrower sense the word ‘ happiness ' relates only
to the last. Thus human activities branch off in
two directions — corresponding to this double goal
— according to which of the two they aim at realiz-
ing, either predominantly or even exclusively.

As we see, it is simply the pleasure-principle
which draws up the programme of life’s purpose.
This principle dominates the operation of the
mental apparatus from the very beginning ; there
can be no doubt about its efficiency, and yet its
programme is in conflict with the whole world,
with the macrocosm as much as with the micro-
cosm. It simply cannot be put into execution,
the whole constitution of things runs counter to
it ; one might say the intention that man should
be ‘ happy ’ is not included in the scheme of
‘ Creation ’. What is called happiness in its nar-
rowest sense comes from the satisfaction — ^most
often instantaneous — of pent-up needs which have

28 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

reached great intensity, and by its very nature
can only be a transitory experience. When any
condition desired by the pleasure-principle is pro-
tracted, it results in a feeling only of mild comfort ;
we are so constituted that we can only intensely
enjoy contrasts, much less intensely states in them-
selves.i Our possibilities of happiness are thus
limited from the start by our very constitution.
It is much less difficult to be unhappy. Suffering
comes from three quarters : from our own body,
which is destined to decay and dissolution, and
caimot even dispense with anxiety and pain as
danger-signals ; from the outer world, which can
rage against us with the most powerful and piti-
less forces of destruction ; and finally from oiur
relations with other men. The unhappiness which
has this last origin we find perhaps more painful
than any other ; we tend to regard it more or less
as a gratuitous addition, although it cannot be
any less an inevitable fate than the suffering that
proceeds from other sources.

It is no wonder if, under the pressure of these
possibilities of suffering, hmnanity is wont to
reduce its demands for happiness, just as even the
pleasure-principle itself changes into the more
> GoeUie even warns ns that ’ nothing is so hard to bear as a
train of happy days Thu may be an exaggeration all the
same.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 29

accommodatiiig reality-principle under the influence
of external environment ; if a man thinks himself
happy if he has merely escaped unhappiness or
weathered trouble ; if in general the task of avoid-
ing pain forces that of obtaining pleasure into the
bacl^ound. Reflection shows that there are very
different ways of attempting to perform this task ;
and all these ways have been recommended by the
various schools of wisdom in the art of life and put
into practice by men. Unbridled gratification of
all desires forces itself into the foreground as the
most alluring guiding principle in life, but it entails
preferring enjo5unent to caution and penalizes itself
after short indulgence. The other methods, in
which avoidance of pain is the main motive, are
differentiated according to the source of the suffer-
ing against which they are mainly directed. Some
of these measures are extreme and some moderate,
some are one-sided and some deal with several
aspects of the matter at once. Voluntary loneli- »
ness, isolation from others, is the readiest safeguard
against the unhappiness that may arise out of
human relations. We know what this means : the
happiness found along this path is that of peace.
Against the dreaded outer world one can defend
oneself only by turning away in some other direc-
tion, if the difficulty is to be solved sir^le-handed.

30 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

There is indeed another and a better way : that of
combining with the rest of the human community
and taking up the attack on nature, thus forcing
it to obey human will, under the guidance of
science. One is workix^ then with all for the good
of all. But the most interesting methods for
averting pain are those which aim at influencing
the organism itself. In the last analysis all pain
is but sensation ; it only exists in so far as we feel
it, and we feel it only in consequence of certain
characteristics of our organism.

The crudest of these methods of influencing the
body, but also the most effective, is the chemical
one : that of intoxication. I do not think anyone
entirely understands their operation, but it is a
fact that there are certain substances foreign to the
body which, when present in the blood or tissues,
directly cause us pleasurable sensations, but also so
change the conditions of our perceptivity that we
become insensible of disagreeable sensations. The
two effects not only take place simultaneously, they
seem to be closely bound up with each other. But
there must be substances in the chemical composi-
tion of our bodies which can do the same, for we
know of at least one morbid state, that of mania, in
which a condition similar to this intoxication arises
without any drug being absorbed. Besides this.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 3I

our normal mental life shows variations, according
to which pleasure is experienced with more or less
ease, and along with this goes a diminished or
increased sensitivity to pain. It is greatly to be
regretted that this toxic aspect of mental processes
has so far eluded scientific research. The services
rendered by intoxicating substances in the struggle
for happiness and in warding off misery rank so
highly as a benefit that both individuals and races
have given them an established position within their
li^p^onomy. It is not merely the immediate
gain in pleasure which one owes to them, but also a
measure of that independence of the outer world
which is so sorely craved. Men know that with the
help they can get from ‘ drowning their cares ’ they
can at any time shp away from the oppression of
reality and find a refuge in a world of their own
where painful feelings do not enter. We are aware
that it is just this property which constitutes the
danger and injuriousness of intoxicating sub-
stances. In certain circumstances they are to ^
blame when valuable energies which could have,'
been used to improve the lot of humanity are use-
lessly wasted.

The complicated structure of our mental
apparatus admits, however, of a whole series of
other kinds of influence. The gratification of

32 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

instincts is happiness, but when the outer world
lets us starve, refuses us satisfaction of our needs,
they become the cause of very great suffering. So
the hope is bom that by influencing these impulses
one may escape some measure of suflering. This
type of defence against pain no longer r^tes to the
sensory apparatus ; it seeks to control the internal
sources of our needs themselves. An extreme form
of it consists in annihilation of the instincts, as
taught by the wisdom of the East and practised by
the Yogi, When it succeeds, it is true, it involves
giving up aU other activities as well (sacrificing the
whole of hfe), and again, by another path, the only
happiness it brings is that of peace. The same way
is taken when the aim is less extreme and only
control of the instincts is sought. When this is
so, the higher mental systems which recognize the
reality-principle have the upper hand. The aim of
gratification is by no means abandoned in this case ;
a certain degree of protection against suffering is
secured, in that lack of satisfaction causes less pain
when the instincts are kept in check than when they
are imbridled. On the other hand, this brings with
it an undeniable reduction in the degree of enjoy-
ment obtainable. The feeling of happiness pro-
duced by indulgence of a wild, untamed craving is
incomparably more intense than is the satisf3dng of

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 33

a curbed desire. The irresistibility of perverted
impulses, perhaps the charm of forbidden things
generally, may in this way be explained economic-
ally.

Another method of guarding against pain is by
using the libido-displacements that our mental
equipment allows of, by which it gains so greatly in
flexibility. The task is then one of transferring the
instinctual aims into such directions that they
cannot be frustrated by the outer world. Sub-
limation of the instincts lends an aid in this. Its
success is greatest when a man knows how to
heighten sufficiently his capacity for obtaining
pleasure from mental and intellectual work. Fate
has little power against him then. This kind of
satisfaction, such as the artist's joy in creation,
in embod3dng his phantasies, or the scientist’s in
solving problems or discovering truth, has a special
quality which we shall certainly one day be able to
define metapsychologically. Until then we can
only say metaphorically it seems to us ‘ higher and
finer ', but compared with that of gratifying gross
primitive instincts its intensity is tempered and
diffused ; it does not overwhelm us physicaUy.
The weak point of this method, however, is that
it is not generally applicable ; it is only available
to the few. It presupposes special gifts and dis-

34 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

positions which are not very commonly found in a
sufBlcient degree. And even to these few it does
not secure complete protection against sufimng ;
it gives no invulnerable armour against the
arrows of fate, and it usually fails when a
man's own body becomes a source of sufiering to
him.*

This behaviour reveals clearly enough its aim —
that of making oneself independent of the external
world, by looking for happiness in the inner things
of the mind ; in the next method the same feat-

> When there is no special disposition m a man imperatively
prescnbing the direction of his bfe-interest, the ordinary work
aU can do for a hvehhood can play the part which Voltaire wisely
advocated it should do in onr hves. It is not possible to discuss
the significance of work for the economics of the hbido adequately
wittun Uie limits of a short survey. Laymg stress upon import-
ance of work has a gr«iter effect than any other technique of
hving in the direction of bmdmg the mdividual more closely to
reality ; in his work he is at least securely attached to a part of
reahty, the human community. Work is no less valuable for the
opportumty it and the human relations connected with it provide
for a very considerable discharge of hbidmal component impulses,
narcissistic, aggressive and even erotic, than becanse it is indis-
pensable for subsistence and justifies existence m a society. The
daily work of earning a hvelihood affords particular satisfaction
when it has been selected by free choice, t.t. when through sub-
limation It enables use to be made of ezistmg inchnationa, of
instmctual impulses that have retamed theu: strength, or are
more intense than usual for constitutional reasons. And yet as a
path to happiness work is not valued very highly by men. They
do not run after it as they do after oUier opportumties for gratifi-
cation. The great majority work only when forced by necessity,
and this natural human aversion to work gives rise to the moat
difficult social problems.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 35

ures are even more marked. The connection
with reality is looser still ; satisfaction is obtained
through illusions, which are recognized as such,
without the discrepancy between them and reality
being allowed to interfere with the pleasure they
give. These illusions are derived from the life of
phantasy which, at the time when the sense of
reality developed, was expressly exempted from the
demands of the reality-test and set apart for the
purpose of fulfilling wishes which would be very
hard to realize. At the head of these phantasy-
pleasures stands the enjoyment of works of art
which through the agency of the artist is opened
to those who cannot themselves create.^ Those
who are sensitive to the influence of art do not
know how to rate it high enough as a source of
happiness and consolation in life. Yet art affects
us but as a mild narcotic and can provide no more
than a temporary refuge for us from the hardships
of life ; its influence is not strong enough to make
us forget real misery.

Another method operates more energetically
and thoroughly ; it regards reality as the source
of all suflering, as the one and only enemy, with
whom life is intolerable and with whom therefore

^ Cf. ' Foimnlations regarding the Two Principles in Mental
Fnnctioning ’ (1911), CoUtcied Papers, vol. iv. ; and Iniroduetory
Lectures on Psycko-Anaiysis (19x5-17), London, 1922, chapter

36 CrVILlZATIOM AKD ITS DISCONTENTS

all relations must be broken o£E if one is to be
happy in any way at all. The hermit turns his
back on this world ; he wUl have nothing to do
with it. But one can do more than that ; one can
try to re-create it, try to build up another instead,
from which the most unbearable features are elim-
inated and replaced by others corresponding to
one's own wishes. He who in his despair and
defiance sets out on this path will not as a rule
get very far ; reality will be too strong for him.
He becomes a madman and usually finds no one
to help him in carrying through his delusion. It
is said, however, that each one of us behaves in
some respect like the paranoiac, substituting a
wish-fulfilment for some aspect of the world which
is unbearable to him, and carrying this delusion
through into reality. When a large number of
people make this attempt together and try to
obtain assurance of happiness and protection from
sufEering by a delusional transformation of reality
it acquires special significance. The religions of
humanity, too, must be classified as mass-delusions
of this kind. Needless to say, no one who shares
a delusion recognizes it as such.

I do not suppose that I have enumerated aU the
methods by which men strive to win happiness
and keep sufEering at bay, and I know, too, that the

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 37

material might have been arranged differently.
One of these methods I have not yet mentioned at
all — ^not because I had forgotten it, but because it
wiU interest us in another connection. How would
it be possible to forget this way of all others of
practising the art of life 1 It is conspicuous for
its remarkable capacity to combine characteristic
features. Needless to say, it, too, strives to bring
about independence of fate — as we may best call
it — and with this object it looks for satisfaction
within the mind, and uses the capacity for dis-
placing libido which we mentioned before, but it
does not turn away from the outer world ; on the
contrary, it takes a firm hold of its objects and
obtains happiness from an emotional relation to
them. Nor is it content to strive for avoidance of
pain — that goal of weary resignation ; rather it
passes that by heedlessly and holds fast to the
deep-rooted, passionate striving for a positive ful-
filment of happiness. Perhaps it really comes
nearer to this goal than any other method. I am
speaking, of course, of that way of life which makes
love the centre of all things and anticipates all
happiness from loving and being loved. This atti-
tude is familiar enough to all of us ; one of the
forms in which love manifests itself, sexual love,
gives us our most intense experience of an over-

38 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

whdming pleasurable sensation and so furnishes a
prototype for oiu- strivings after happiness. What
is more natural than that we should persist in
seeking happiness along the path by which we
first encountered it ? The weak side of this way
of living is clearly evident ; and were it not for
this, no human being would ever have thought of
abandoning this path to happiness in favour of any
other. We are never so defenceless against suffer-
ing as when we love, never so forlornly unhappy as
when we have lost our love-object or its love.
But this does not complete the story of that way
of life which bases happiness on love ; there is
much more to be said about it.

We may here go on to consider the interesting
case in which happiness in life is sought first and
foremost in the enjojment of beauty, wherever it
is to be found by our senses and our judgement,
the beauty of human forms and movements, of
natural objects, of landscapes, of artistic and even
scientific creations. As a goal in life this aesthetic
attitude offers little protection against the menace
of suffering, but it is able to compensate for a great
deal. The enjoyment of beauty produces a par-
ticular, mildly intoxicating kind of sensation.
There is no very evident use in beauty ; the neces-
sity of it for cultural purposes is not apparent.

CIVILIZA110N AND ITS DISCONTENTS 39

and yet civilization could not do without it. The
science of aesthetics investigates the conditions in
which things are r^arded as beautiful; it can
give no explanation of the nature or origin of
beauty ; as usual, its lack of results is concealed
under a flood of resounding and meaningless words.
Unfortunately, psycho-anal}^, too, has less to say
about beauty than about most thiugs. Its deriva-
tion from the realms of sexual sensation is all that
seems certain ; the love of beauty is a perfect
example of a feeling with an inhibited aim.
' Beauty ’ and ' attraction ’ are first of all the attri-
butes of a sexual object. It is remarkable that the
genitals themselves, the sight of which is always
exciting, are hardly ever regarded as beautiful ;
the quality of beauty seems, on the other hand, to
attach to certain secondary sexual characters.

In spite of the incompleteness of these con-
siderations, I will venture on a few remarks in
conclusion of this discussion. The goal towards
which the pleasure-principle impds us — of be-
coming happy — ^is not attainable ; yet we may not
— ^nay, cannot — give up the effort to come nearer
to realization of it by some means or other. Very
different paths may be taken towards it : some
pursue the positive aspect of the aim, attainment
of pleasure ; others the native, avoidance of

40 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

pain. By none of these can we achieve all
that we desire. In that modified sense in which
we have seen it to be attainable, happiness is a
problem of the economics of the libido in each
individual. There is no sovereign recipe in this
matter which suits all ; each one must find out
for himself by which particular means he may
achieve felicity. AH kinds of different factors
will operate to influence his choice. It depends
on how much real gratification he is likely to
obtain in the external world, and how far he will
find it necessary to make himself independent of
it ; finally, too, on the belief he has in himself of
his power to alter it in accordance with his wishes.
Even at this stage the mental constitution of the
individual will play a decisive part, aside from any
external considerations. The man who is pre-
dominantly erotic will choose emotional relation-
ships with others before all else ; the narcissistic
t 5 T)e, who is more self-suf6cient, will seek his
essential satisfactions in the inner workings of his
own soul ; the man of action will never abandon
! the external world in which he can essay his
’ power. The interests of narcissistic types will be
determined by their particular gifts and the
degree of instinctual sublimation of which they
are capable. When any choice is pursued to an

aVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 4I

extreme it penalizes itsdf, in that it exposes the
individual to the dangers accompanying any one
exclusive life-interest which may always prove in-
adequate. Just as a cautious business-man avoids
investing all his capital in one concern, so wisdom
would probably admonish us also not to antici-
pate all our happiness from one quarter alone.
Success is never certain ; it depends on the co-|
operation of many factors, perhaps on none more |
than the capacity of the mental constitution to
adapt itself to the outer world and then utilize /
this last for obtaining pleasure. Anyone who is
bom with a specially unfavourable instinctual
constitution, and whose libido-components do not
go through the transformation and modification
necessary for successful achievement in later life,
will find it hard to obtain happiness from his
external environment, especially if he is faced with
the more difficult tasks. One last possibility of|
dealing with life remains to such people and it offers
them at least substitute-gratifications; it takes
the form of the flight into neurotic illness, and they
mostly adopt it while they are still young. Those
whose efforts to obtain happiness come to nought
in later years still find consolation in the pleasure
of chronic intoxication, or else they embark upon
that despairing attempt at revolt — ^psychosis.

43 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Religion circumscribes these measures of choice
and adaptation by urging upon everyone alike its
single way of achieving happiness and guarding
against pain. Its method consists in decrying the
value of life and promulgating a view of the real
world that is distorted like a delusion, and both of
these imply a preliminary intimidating influence
upon intelligence. At such a cost — ^by the forcible
imposition of mental infantilism and inducing a
mass-delusion — ^religion succeeds in saving many
people from individual neuroses. But little more.
There are, as we have said, many paths by which
the happiness attainable for man can be reached,
but none which is certain to take him to it. Nor
can religion keep her promises either. When the
faithful find themselves reduced in the end to
speaking of God’s ‘ inscrutable decree ’, they
thereby avow that all that is left to them in their
suflerings is tmconditional submission as a last-
remaining consolation and source of happiness.
And if a man is willing to come to this, he could
probably have arrived there by a shorter road.

Ill

O UR discussion of happiness has so far not
taught us much that is not already
common knowl^ge. Nor does the pros-
pect of discovering an3dhing new seem much
greater if we go on with the problem why it is so
hard for mankind to be happy. We gave the
answer before, when we cited the three sources of
human sufferings, namely, the superior force of
nature, the disposition to decay of our bodies,
and the iuadequacy of our methods of regulating
human relations in the family, the community and
the state. In regard to the first two, our judgement
cannot hesitate : it forces us to recognize these
somces of suffering and to submit to the inevitable.
We shall never completely subdue nature ; our
body, too, is an organism, itself a part of nature, and
will always coninin the seeds of dissolution, with
its limited powers of adaptation and achievement.
The effect of this recognition is in no way dis-
heartening : on the contrary, it points out the
direction for our efforts. If we cannot abolish all

43

44 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

suffering, yet a great deal of it we can, and can
mitigate more ; the experience of several thousand
years has convinced us of this. To the third, the
social source of our distresses, we take up a different
attitude. We prefer not to regard it as one at all;
we cannot see why the systems we have ourselves
created should not rather ensure protection and
well-being for us all. To be sure, when we consider
how unsuccessful our efforts to safeguard against
suffering in this particular have proved, the sus-
picion dawns upon us that a bit of unconquerable
nature lurks concealed behind this difficulty as
well — ^in the shape of our own mental constitution.

When we start to consider this possibility, we
come across a point of view which is so amazing that
we will pause over it. According to it, om: so-
called civilization itself is to blame for a great part
of our misery, and we should be much happier if we
were to give it up and go back to primitive con-
ditions. I call this amazing, because — ^however one
may define culture — ^it is imdeniable that every
means by which we try to guard ourselves against
menaces from the several sources of human distress
is a part of this same culture.

How has it come about that so many people
have adopted this strange attitude of hostility to
civilization ? In my opinion, it arose from a back-

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 45

ground of profound long-standing discontent with
the existing state of civilization, which finally
oystallized into this judgement as a result of
certain historical happenings. I believe I can
identify the last two of these ; I am not learned
enough to trace the links in the chain back into the
history of the human species. At the time when
Christianity conquered the pagan religions some
such antagonism to cultmre must already have been
actively at work. It is closely related to the low
estimation put upon earthly life by Christian
doctrine. The earlier of the last two historical
developments was when, as a result of voyages of
discovery, men came into contact with primitive
peoples and races. To the Europeans, who failed
to observe them carefully and misunderstood what
they saw, these people seemed to lead simple, happy
lives — ^wanting for nothing — such as the travellers
who visited them, with all their superior cultture,
were unable to achieve. Later experience has
corrected this opinion on many points ; in several
instances the ease of life was due to the boimty of
natme and the possibilities of ready satisfaction for
the great human needs, but it was erroneously
attributed to the absence of the complicated con-
ditions of civilization. The last of the two his-
torical events is especially familiar to us ; it was

46 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

when people b^;an to understand the nature of
the neuroses which threats to undermine the
modicum of happiness open to civilized man. It
was found that men become neurotic because they
cannot tolerate the d^;ree of privation that society
imposes on them in virtue of its cultural ideals, and
it was supposed that a return to greater ix)ssi-
bilities of happiness would ensue if these standards
were abolished or greatly relaxed.

And there exists an element of disappointment,
in addition. In the last goierations man has made
extraordinary strides in knowledge of the natural
sciences and technical application of them, and
has established his dominion over nature in a way
never before imagined. The details of this forward
progress are universally known : it is unnecessary
to enumerate them. Mankind is proud of its ex-
ploits and has a right to be. But men are begin-
ning to perceive that all this newly won power
over space and time, this conquest of the forces of
nature, this fulfilment of age-old longings, has not
increased the amount of pleasure they can obtain
in life, has not made them feel any happier. The
valid conclusion from this is merely that power over
nature is not the only condition of human happi-
ness, just as it is not the only goal of civilization's
efforts, and there is no ground for inferring that its

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 47

technical progress is worthless from the standpoint
of happiness. It prompts one to exclaim : is it not
then a positive pleasure, an unequivocal gain in
happiness, to be able to hear, whenever I like, the
voice of a child living hundreds of miles away, or to
know directly a friend of mine arrives at his destina-
tion that he has come well and safely through the
long and troublesome voyage ? And is it nothing
that medical science has succeeded in enormously
reducing the mortality of young children, the
dangers of infection for women in childbirth, in-
deed, in very considerably prolonging the average
length of human life ? And there is still a long list
one could add to these benefits that we owe to
the much-despised era of scientific and practical
progress — ^but a critical, pessimistic voice makes
itself heard, saying that most of these advantages
follow the model of those ‘ cheap pleasures ’ in the
anecdote. One gets this enjoyment by sticking
one’s bare leg outside the bedclothes on a cold
winter’s night and then drawing it in again. If
there were no railway to make light of distances
my child would never have left home and I should
not need the telephone to hear his voice. If there
were no vessels crossing the ocean my friend would
never have embarked on his voyage and I should
not need the telegraph to relieve my anxiety about

48 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

him. What is the use of reducing the mortality of
children when it is precisely this reduction which
imposes the greatest moderation on us in begetting
them, so that taken all roimd we do not rear more
children than in the da}^ before the reign of hygiene,
while at the same time we have created difficult
conditions for sexual life in marriage and probably
counteracted the beneficial effects of natural selec-
tion ? And what do we gain by a long life when
it is full of hardship and starved of joys and so
wretched that we can only welcome death as our
deliverer ?

It seems to be certain that our present-day
civilization does not inspire in us a feeling of well-
being, but it is very difficult to form an opinion
whether in earlier times people felt any happier
and what part their cultural conditions played in
the question. We always tend to regard trouble
objectively, i.e. to place omrselves with our own
wants and our own sensibilities in the same con-
ditions, so as to discover what opportunities for
happiness or unhappiness we should find in them.
This method of considering the problem, which
appears to be objective because it ignores the
varieties of subjective sensitivity, is of course the
most subjective possible, for by applying it one
substitutes one’s own mental attitude for the un-

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 49

Iqiown attitude of other men. Happiness, on the
contrary, is something essentially subjective. How-
ever we may shrink in horror at the thought of
certain situations, that of the galley-slaves in
antiquity, of the peasants in the Thirty Years’ War,
of the victims of the Inquisition, of the Jews await-
ing a pogrom, it is stiU impossible for us to feel
ourselves into the position of these people, to
imagine the differences which would be brought
about by constitutional obtuseness of feeling,
gradual stupefaction, the cessation of all anticipa-
tion, and by all the grosser and more subtle ways in
which insensibility to both pleasurable and painful
sensations can be induced. Moreover, on occasions
when the most extreme forms of suffering have to
be endured, special mental protective devices come
into operation. It seems to me unprofitable to
follow up this aspect of the problem fiirther.

It is time that we should turn our attention to
the nature of this culture, the value of which is so
much disputed from the point of view of happiness.
Until we have learnt something by examining it
for ourselves, we will not look round for formulas
which express its essence in a few words. We will
be content to repeat ^ that the word ‘ culture ’
describes the sum of the achievements and institu-

* Cf. The Future of an Illusion.

3a CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

camera he has created an instrument which registers
transitory visual impressions, just as the gramo-
phone does with equally transient auditory ones ;
both are at bottom materializations of his own
power of memory. With the help of the tele-
phone he can hear at distances which even fairy-
tales would treat as insuperable ; writing to b^;in
with was the voice of the absent ; dwellings were
a substitute for the mother’s womb, that first
abode, in which he was safe and felt so content,
for which he probably yearns ever after.

It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that ;
this story of what man by his science and practical
inventions has achieved on this earth, where he
first appeared as a weakly member of the animal
kingdom, and on which each individual of his
species must ever again appear as a helpless infant
— 0 inch of nature I — is a direct fulfilment of all, or
of most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales. All
these possessions he has acquired through culture.
Long ago he formed an ideal conception of omni-
potence and omniscience which he embodied in his
gods. Whatever seemed imattainable to his de-
sires — or forbidden to him — he attributed to these
gods. One may say, therefore, that these gods
were the ideals of his culture. Now he has him-
sdf approached very near to realizing this ideal.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 53

he has nearly become a god himself. But only, it
is true, in the way that ideals are usually realized
in the general experience of humanity. Not com-
pletely ; in some respects not at all, in others only
by halves. Man has become a god by means of
artificial limbs, so to speak, quite magnificent
when equipped with all his accessory organs ;
but they do not grow on him and they still give
him trouble at times. However, he is entitled
to console himself with the thought that this
evolution will not come to an end in a.d. 1930.
Future ages will produce further great advances
in this realm of culture, probably inconceivable
now, and will increase man’s likeness to a god still
more. But with the aim of our study in mind,
we will not forget, all the same, that the human
being of to-day is not happy with all his likeness
to a god.

Thus we recognize that a country has attained
a high level of civilization when we find that
everything in it that can be helpful in exploit-
ing the earth for man’s benefit and in protecting
him against nature — ever3dhing, in short, that is
useful to him — ^is cultivated and effectively pro-
tected. In such a country the course of rivers
which threaten to overflow their banks is regu-
lated, their waters guided through canals to places

54 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

where they are needed. The soil is industriously
cultivated and planted with the vegetation suited
to it : the mineral wealth is brought up assidu-
ously from the depths and wrought into the
implements and utensils that are required. The
means of communication are frequent, rapid and
reliable ; wild and dangerous animals have been
exterminated, the breeding of tamed and domesti-
cated ones prospers. But we demand other things
besides these of civilization, and, curiously enough,
we expect to find them existing in the same
countries. As if we wished to repudiate the first
requisition we made, we count it also as proof of
a high level of civilization when we see that the
industry of the inhabitants is applied as well to
things which are not in the least useful and, on
the contrary, seem to be useless, e.g. when the
parks and gardens in a town, which are necessary
as playgrounds and air-reservoirs, also bear flower-
ing plants, or when the windows of dwellings are
adorned with flowers. We soon become aware
that the useless thing which we require of civiliza-
tion is beauty ; we expect a cultured people to
revere beauty where it is found in nature and to
create it in their handiwork so far as they are able.
But this is far from exhausting what we require of
civilization. Besides, we expect to see the signs

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 55

of cleanliness and order. We do not think highly
of the adtural level of an English country town
in the time of Shakespeare when we read that
there was a tall dungheap in front of his father's
house in Stratford ; we are indignant and call it
' barbarous which is the opposite of civilized,
when we find the paths in the Wiener Wald
littered with paper. Dirt of any kind seems to us
incompatible with civilization ; we extend our
demands for cleanliness to the human body also,
and are amazed to hear what an objectionable
odour emanated from the person of the Roi
Soleil ; we shake our heads when we are shown
the tiny wash-basin on the Isola Bella which
Napoleon used for his daily ablutions. Indeed,
we are not surprised if anyone employs the use of
soap as a direct measure of civilization. It is the
same with order, which, like cleanliness, relates
entirely to man’s handiwork. But whereas we
cannot expect cleanliness in nature, order has, on
the contrary, been imitated from nature; man’s
observations of the great astronomical periodicities
not only furnished him with a model, but formed
the ground-plan of his first attempts to introduce
order into his own life. Order is a kind of repeti-
tion-compulsion by which it is ordained once for
all when, where and how a thing shall be done so

56 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

that on every siTnilar occasion doubt and hesita-
tion shall be avoided. The benefits of order are
incontestable : it enables us to use space and time
to the best advantage, while saving expenditure
of mental energy. One would be justified in ex-
pecting that it would have ingrained itself from
the start and without opposition into all human
activities ; and one may well wonder that this has
not happened, and that, on the contrary, human
beings manifest an inborn tendency to negligence,
irregularity and untrustworthiness in their work,
and have to be laboriously trained to imitate the
example of their celestial models.

Beauty, cleanliness and order clearly occupy a
peculiar position among the requirements of civil-
ization. No one will maintain that they are as
essential to life as the activities aimed at control-
ling the forces of nature and as other factors which
we have yet to mention ; and yet no one would
willingly relegate them to the background as
trivial matters. Beauty is an instance which
plainly shows that culture is not simply utilitarian
in its aims, for the lack of beauty is a thing we
cannot tolerate in civilization. The utilitarian
advantages of order are quite apparent ; with
regard to cleanliness we have to remember that it
is required of us by hygiene, and we may surmise

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 57

that even before the of scientific prophylaxis
the connection between the two was not altogether
unsuspected by mankind. But these aims and
endeavours of culture are not entirely to be ex-
plained on utilitarian lines ; there must be some-
thing else at work besides.

According to general opinion, however, there is
one feature of culture which characterizes it better
than any other, and that is the value it sets upon
the higher mental activities — ^intellectual, scien-
tific and aesthetic achievement — ^the leading part
it concedes to ideas in human life. First and fore-
most among these ideas come the religious S3^tems
with their complicated evolution, on which I have
elsewhere endeavoured to throw a light ; next to
them come philosophical speculations; and last,
the ideals man has formed, his conceptions of the
perfection possible in an individual, in a people,
in humanity as a whole, and the demands he makes
on the basis of these conceptions. These creations
of his mind are not independent of each other ; on
the contrary, they are closely interwoven, and
this complicates the attempt to describe them, as
well as that to trace their psychological deriva-
tion. If we assume as a general h3^thesis that
the force behind all human activities is a striving
towards the two convergent aims of profit and

58 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

pleasure, we must then acknowledge this as valid
also for these other manifestations of culture,
although it can be plainly recognized as true only
in respect of science and art. It cannot be
doubted, however, that the remainder, too, corre-
spond to some powerful need in human beings —
perhaps to one which develops fully only in a
minority of people. Nor may we allow ourselves
to be misled by our own judgements concerning
the value of any of these religious or philosophical
systems or of these ideals ; whether we look upon
them as the highest achievement of the human
mind, or whether we deplore them as fallacies, one
must acknowledge that where they exist, and
especially where they are in the ascendant, they
testify to a high level of civilization.

We now have to consider the last, and certainly
by no means the least important, of the components
of culture, namely, the ways in which social re-
lations, the relations of one man to another, are
regulated, all that has to do with him as a neigh-
bour, a source of help, a sexual object to others, a
member of a family or of a state. It is especially
difficult in this matter to remain unbiased by any
ideal standards and to ascertain exactly what is
specifically cultural here. Perhaps one might begin
with the statement that the first attempt ever

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS $9

made to regulate these social relations already
contained the essential element of civilization. Had
no such attempt been made, these relations would
be subject to the wills of individuals : that is to say,
the man who was ph57sically strongest would decide
things in accordance with his own interests and
desires. The situation would remain the same
even though this strong man should in his tmn
meet with another who was stronger than he.
Hinnan life in commtmities only becomes possible
when a number of men unite together in strength
superior to any single individual and remain united
against all single individuals. The strength of this
united body is then opposed as ‘ Right ' against the
strength of any individual, which b condemned as
* brute force '. Thb substitution of the power of a
united number for the power of a single man b the
decbive step towards civilization. The essence of
it lies in the circumstetnce that the members of the
commimity have restricted their possibilities of
gratification, whereas the individual recognized no
such restrictions. The first requisite of culture,
therefore, b justice — ^that b, the assurance that a
law once made will not be broken in favour of any
individual. Thb implies nothing about the ethical
value of any such law. The further course of
cultural development seems to tend towards

60 CIVILIZATION AND TTS DISCONTENTS

ensuring that the law shall no longer represent the
will of any small body — caste, tribe, section of the
population — ^which may behave like a predatory
individual towards other such groups perhaps con*
taining larger numbers. The end-result would be
a state of law to which all — ^that is, all who are
capable of uniting — ^have contributed by making
some sacrifice of their own desires, and which leaves
none — ^again with the same exception — at the
mercy of brute force.

The liberty of the individual is not a benefit of
culture. It was greatest before any culture, though
indeed it had little value at that time, because the
individual was hardly in a position to defend it.
Liberty has undergone restrictions through the
evolution of civilization, and justice demands that
these restrictions shall apply to all. The desire for
freedom that makes itself felt in a human com-
munity may be a revolt against some existing
injustice and so may prove favourable to a further
development of civilization and remain compatible
with it. But it may also have its origin m the
primitive roots of the personality, still imfettered
by civilizing influences, and so become a source of
antagonism to culture. Thus the cry for freedom
is directed either against particular forms or
demands of culture or else against culture itself.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 6l

It does not seem as ii man could be brought by any
sort of influence to change his nature into that of
the ants ; he will always, one imagines, defend his
claim to individual freedom against the will of the
multitude. A great part of the struggles of man-
kind centres roimd the single task of finding some
expedient {i.e. satisfying) solution between these
individual claims and those of the civilized com-
munity ; it is one of the problems of man’s fate
whether this solution can be arrived at in some
particular form of culture or whether the conflict
will prove irreconcilable.

We have obtained a clear impression of the
general picture presented by culture through adopt-
ing the common view as to which aspects of human
life are to be called cultural ; but it is true that so
far we have discovered nothing that is not common
knowledge. We have, however, at the same time
guarded ourselves against accepting the miscon-
ception that civilization is synon3nnous with
becoming perfect, is the path by which man is
ordained to reach perfection. But now a certain
point of view presses for consideration ; it will lead
perhaps in another direction. The evolution of
culture seems to us a peculiar kind of process
passing over humanity, of which several aspects
strike us as f amiliar . We can describe this process

62 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

in terms of the modifications it effects on the known
human instinctual dispositions, which it is the
economic task of ovx lives to satisfy. Some of these
instincts become absorbed, as it were, so that some-
thing appears in place of them which in an indi-
vidual we call a character-trait. The most remjffk-
able example of this process is found in respect of
the anal erotism of yoimg human beings. Their
primary interest in the excretory function, its
organs and products, is changed in the course of
their growth into a group of traits that we know
well — thriftiness, orderliness and cleanliness —
valuable and welcome qualities in themselves,
which, however, may be intensified till they visibly
dominate the personality and produce what we call
the anal character. How this happens we do not
know ; but there is no doubt about the accuracy
of this conclusion.! Now, we have seen that order
and cleanliness are essentially cultmral demands,
although the necessity of them for survival is not
particularly apparent, any more than their suit-
ability as sources of pleasure. At this point we
must be struck for the first time with the similarity
between the process of cultural development and
that of the libidinal development in an individual.

> Cf. ‘ Character and Anal Erotism ' (1908), CoUecUd Papers,
voL ii. ; also numerous contributions to the subject by Ernest
Jones and others.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 63

Other instincts have to be induced to change the
conditions of their gratification, to find it along
other paths, a process which is usually identical
with what we know so wdl as sublimation (of the
aim of an instinct), but which can sometimes be
difierentiated from this. Sublimation of instinct
is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural
evolution ; this it is that makes it possible for the
higher mental operations, scientific, artistic, ideo-
logical activities, to play such an important part
in civilized life. If one were to yield to a first
impression, one would be tempted to say that
sublimation is a fate which has been forced upon
instincts by culture alone. But it is better to
reflect over this a while longer. Thirdly and lastly,
and this seems most important of all, it is impossible
to ignore the extent to which civilization is built up
on renunciation of instinctual gratifications, the
degree to which the existence of civilization pre-
supposes the non-gratification (suppression, re-
pression or something else ?) of powerful instinctual
iirgendes. This ' cultural privation ’ dominates
the whole field of social relations between human
beings ; we know already that it is the cause of the
antagonism against which all civilization has to
fight. It sets hard tasks for our scientific work, too;
we have a great deal to explain here. It is not easy

64 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

to understand how it can become possible to with-
hold satisfaction from an instinct. Nor is it by any
means without risk to do so ; if the deprivation is
not made good economically, one may be certain of
producing serious disorders.

But now, if we wish to know what use it is to us
to have recognized the evolution of culture as a
special process, comparable to the normal growth
of an individual to maturity, we must clearly attack
another problem and put the question : what are
the influences to which the evolution of culture
owes its origin, how did it arise and what deter-
mined its course ?

IV

T his task seems too big a one ; one may
well confess oneself diffident. Here follows
what little I have been able to didt
about it.

Once primitive man had made the discovery
that it lay in his own hands — speaking literally —
to improve his lot on earth by working, it cannot
have been a matter of indifierence to him whether
another man worked with him or against him.
The other acquired the value of a fellow-worker,
and it was advantageous to live with him. Even
earlier, in his ape-like prehistory, man had adopted
the habit of forming families : his first helpers
were probably the members of his family. One
may suppose that the founding of families was in
some way connected with the period when the
need for genital satisfaction, no longer appearing
like an occasional guest who turns up suddenly
and then vanishes without letting one hear any-
thing of him for long intervals, had settled down
with each man like a permanent lodger. When
65 E

66 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

this happened, the male acquired a motive for
keeping the female, or rather, his sexual objects,
near him ; while the female, who wanted not to be
separated from her helpless young, in their in-
terests, too, had to stay by the stronger male.^ In

1 The organic periodicity of the seznal process has persisted,
it is tme, bnt its effect on mental sexnal excitation has been almost
reversed. This change is connected primarily with the diminishing
importance of the olfactory stimuli by means of which the
menstrual process produced sexual excitement m the mind of the
male. Their function was taken over by visual stimuh, which
could operate permanently, instead of mtermittently like the
olfactory ones. The ‘ taboo of menstruation * has its origin m
this * organic r epression ', which acted as a barrier against a phase
of development that had been surpassed ; all its other motivations
are probably of a secondary nature. (Cf. C. D. Daly, * Hmdu-
m3rthologie und Kastrationakomplex Imago, Bd. xiii., 1927.)
This process is repeated on a different level when the gods of a
foregone cultural epoch are changed mto demons in the next.
The diminution in importance of olfactory stimuli seems itself,
however, to be a consequence of man’s erecting himself from the
earth, of his adoption of an upright gait, which made his gemtals,
that before had been covered, visible and m need of protection
and so evoked feelmgs of shame. Sian’s erect posture, therefore,
would represent the begiiiiung of the momentous process of
cultural evolution. The cham of development would run from
this onward, through the dinunution m the importance of olfactory
stimuli and the isolation of women at their periods to a time
when visual stimuh became paramount, the gemtals became
visible, further till sexual exatation became constant and the
family was foxmded, and so to the threshold of human culture.
'This IS only a theoretical speculation, but it is important enough
to be worth checking carefully by the conditions obtainmg among
the animals closely alhed to man.

Thera is an unmistakable social factor at work in the impulse
of civilization towards cleanlmess, which has been subsequently
justified by considerations of hygiene but had nevertheless foimd
e x p r e ssi on before they were appreciated. The impulse towards
cleanhneas originates in the stnving to get rid of excretions which

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 67

this primitive family one essential feature of cul-
ture is lacking : the will of the father, the head of
it, was unfettered. I have endeavoured in Totem
und Tabu to show how the way led from this
family-life to the succeeding phase of co mm unal
existence in the form of a band of brothers. By
overpowering the father, the sons had discovered
that several men united can be stronger than
a single man. The totemic stage of culture is

have become nnpleasant to the sense-perceptions. We know that
things are difieient m the nursery. Excreta arouse no aversicm
in children ; they seem preaons to them, as bemg parts of their
own bodies which have been detached from them. The training
of children is very energetic m this particular ; its object is to
expedite the development that lies ahead of them, accordmg to
which the excreta are to become worthless, disgnstmg, horrible
and despicable to them. Such a reversal of values would be almost
impossible to bring about, were it not that these substances expelled
from the body are destmed by their strong odours to share the
fate that overtook the olfactory stimuh after man had erected
himself from the ground. Anal erotism, therefore, is from the first
subjected to the ' organic lejnession ’ which opened up the way to
culture. The social factor which has been active m the further
modifications of anal erotism comes mto play with the fact that
in spite of all man’s evolutionary progress the smell of his own
excretions is scarcely disagreeable to him yet, but so far only
that of the evacuations of others. The man who is not dean, i.e.
who does not eliminate his excretions, therefore ofiends others,
shows no consideration for them — a fact which is exemplified m the
commonest and most forcible terms of abuse. It vrould be incom-
prehensible, too, that man should use as an abusive epithet the
name of his most faithful fnend m the animal world, if dogs did
not incur the contempt of men through two of their character-
istics, t.e. that they are creatures of smell and have no honor of
excrement, and, secondly, that they are not ashamed of their
sexnal functions.

68 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

founded upon the restrictions that the band were
obliged to impose on one another in order to
maintain the new S3rstem. These taboos were the
first ‘ Right ’ or law. The life of human beings in
common therefore had a twofold foundation, i.e.
the compulsion to work, created by external neces-
sity, and the power of love, causing the male to
wish to keep his sexual object, the female, near
him, and the female to keep near her that part of
herself which has become detached from her, her
child. Eros and Ananke were the parents of
human culture, too. The first result of culture
was that a larger number of human beings could
then live together in common. And since the
two great powers were here co-operating together,
one might have expected that further cultural
evolution would have proceeded smoothly towards
ever greater mastery over the external world, as
well as towards greater extension in the numbers
of men sharing the life in common. Nor is it
easy to imderstand how this culture can be felt
as anything but satisfying by those who partake
of it.

Before we go on to enquire where the disturb-
ances in it arise, we will let ourselves digress from
the point that love was one of the founders of
culture and so fill a gap left in our previous dis-

CIVIUZATIOK AND ITS DISCONTENTS 69

cussion. We said that man, having found by
experience that sexual (genital) love afioided him
his greatest gratification, so that it became in
effect a protot37pe of all happiness to him, must
have been thereby impelled to seek his happiness
further along the path of sexual relations, to make
genital erotism the central point of his life. We
went on to say that in so doing he becomes to a
very dangerous degree dependent on a part of the
outer world, namely, on his chosen loveK)bject,
and this exposes him to most painful sufferings if
he is rejected by it or loses it through death or
defection. The wise men of all ages have conse-
quently warned us emphatically against this way
of life ; but in spite of all it retains its attraction
for a great number of people.

A small minority are enabled by their constitu-
tion nevertheless to find happiness along the path
of love ; but far-reaching mental transformations
of the erotic function are necessary before this is
possible. These people make themselves inde-
pendent of their object's acquiescence by trans-
ferring the main value from the fact of being loved
to their own act of loving ; they protect them-
selves against loss of it by attaching their love
not to individual objects but to all men equally,
and they avoid the uncertainties and disappoint-

70 CIVIUZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

ments of genital love by turning away from its
sexual aim and modifying the instinct into an
impulse with an inhibited aim. The state which
they induce in themselves by this process — an
unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude — ^has
little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissi-
tudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless
derived. It seems that Saint Francis of Assisi
may have carried this method of using love to
produce an inner feeling of happiness as far as
anyone ; what we are thus characterizing as one
of the procedures by which the pleasure-principle
fulfils itself has in fact been liuked up in many
ways with religion ; the connection between them
may lie in those remote fastnesses of the mind
where the distinctions between the ego and
objects and between the various objects become
matters of indifference. From one ethical stand-
point, the deeper motivation of which will later
become clear to us, this inclination towards an
all-embracing love of others and of the world at
large is regarded as the highest state of mind of
which man is capable. Even at this early stage
in the discussion I will not withhold the two
principal objections we have to raise against this
view. A love that does not discriminate seems to
us to lose some of its own value, since it does

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 71

an injustice to its object. And secondly, not all
men are worthy of love.

The love that instituted the family still retains
its power; in its original form it does not stop short
of direct sexual satisfaction, and in its modified
form as aim-inhibited friendliness it influences our
civilization. In both these forms it carries on its
task of binding men and women to one another,
and it does this with greater intensity than can be
achieved through the interest of work in common.
The casual and undifierentiated way in which the
word ‘ love ’ is employed by language has its genetic
justification. In general usage the relation between
a man and a woman whose genital desires have led
them to found a family is called love ; but the posi-
tive attitude of feelingbetween parents and children,
between brothers and sisters in a family, is also
called love, although to iis this relation merits
the description of aim-inhibited love or affection.
Love with an inhibited aim was indeed originally
full sensual love and in men’s unconscious minds is
so still. Both of them, the sensual and the aim-
inhibited forms, reach out beyond the family and
create new bonds with others who before were
strangers. Genital love leads to the forming of
new families ; aim-inhibited love to * friendships ',
which are valuable culturally because they do not

72 dvruzAnoN and its discontents

entail many of the limitations of genital love —
for instance, its exclusiveness. But the inter-
relations between love and culture lose their sim-
plicity as devdopment proceeds. On the one
hand, love opposes the interests of culture; on
the other, culture menaces love with grievous re-
strictions.

This lift between than seems inevitable ; the
cause of it is not immediatdy recognizable. It
expresses itsdf first in a conflict between the family
and the laiger community to which the individual
bdongs. We have seen already that one of cul-
ture’s prindpal endeavours is to cement men and
women together into larger units. But the family
will not give up the individual. The doser the
attachment between the members of it, the more
they often tend to remain aloof from others, and
the harder it is for them to enter into the wider
drde of the world at large. That form of life in
common which is phylogenetically older, and is in
childhood its only form, resists being displaced by
the t3T)e that becomes acquired later with culture.
Detachment from the family has become a task that
awaits every adolescent, and often sodety helps
him through it with pubertal and initiatory rites.
One gets the impression that these difficulties form
an integral part of every process of mental evolu-

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 73

tion— and indeed, at bottom, of every organic
development, too.

The next discord is caused by women, who soon
become antithetical to cultural trends and spread
around them their conservative influence — ^the
women who at the beginning laid the foundations
of culture by the appeal of their love. Women
represent the interests of the family and sexual
life ; the work of civilization has become more and
more men’s business ; it confronts them with ever
harder tasks, compels them to sublimations of
instinct which women are not easily able to achieve.
Since man has not an unlimited amount of mental
energy at hjb disposal, he must accomplish his
tasks by distributing his libido to the best advan-
tage. What he employs for cultural purposes he
withdraws to a great extent from women and his
sexual life ; his constant association with men and
his dependence on his relations with them even
estrange him from his duties as husband and
father. Woman finds herself thus forced into the
background by the claims of culture and she
adopts an inimical attitude towards it.

The tendency of culture to set restrictions upon
sexual life is no less evident than its other aim
of widening its sphere of operations. Even the
earliest phase of it, the totemic, brought in its train

74 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

the prohibition against incestuous object-choice,
perhaps the most maiming wound ever inflicted
throughout the ages on the erotic life of man.
Further limitations are laid on it by taboos, laws
and customs, which touch men as well as women.
Various types of culture difl^er in the lengths to
which they carry this ; and the material structure
of the social fabric also aflects the measure of
sexual freedom that remains. We have seen
that culture obe}^ the laws of psychological eco-
nomic necessity in making the restrictions, for it
obtains a great part of the mental energy it needs
by subtracting it from sexuality. Culture behaves
towards sexuality in this respect like a tribe or a
section of the population which has gained the
upper hand and is exploiting the rest to its own
advantage. Fear of a revolt among the oppressed
then becomes a motive for even stricter regulations.
A high-water mark in this type of development has
been reached in ovir Western European civilization.
Psychologically it is fuUy justified in begmning by
censuring any manifestations of the sexual life of
children, for there would be no prospect of curbing
the sexual desires of adults if the ground had not
been prepared for it in childhood. Nevertheless
there is no sort of justification for the lengths
beyond this to which civilized society goes in

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 75

actually den3dng the existence of these manifesta-
tions, which are not merdy demonstrable but posi-
tively glaring. Where sexually mature persons
axe concerned, object-choice is further narrowed
down to the opposite sex and most of the extra-
genital forms of satisfaction are interdicted as
perversions. The standard which declares itself in
these prohibitions is that of a sexual life identical
for all ; it pays no heed to the disparities in the
inborn and acquired sexual constitutions of in-
dividuals and cuts ofi a considerable number of
them from sexual enjo5rment, thus becoming a
cause of grievous injustice. The effect of these
restrictive measures might presumably be that all
the sexual interest of those who are normal and not
constitutionally handicapped could flow without
further forfeiture into the channel left open to it.
But the only outlet not thus censured, hetero-
sexiial genital love, is further circumscribed by the
barriers of legitimacy and monogamy. Present-
day civilization gives us plainly to understand that
sexual relations are permitted only on the basis
of a final, indissoluble bond between a man and
woman ; that sexuality as a source of enjoyment
for its own sake is unacceptable to it ; and that
its intention is to tolerate it only as the hitherto
irreplaceable means of multiplying the human race.

76 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

This, of course, represents an extreme. Every-
one knows that it has proved impossible to put it
into execution, even for short periods. Only the
weaklings have submitted to such comprdhensive
interference with their sexual freedom, and stronger
natures have done so only under one compensatory
condition, of which mention may be made later.
Civilized society has se^ itself obliged to pass over
in silence many transgressions which by its own
ordinances it ought to have penalized. This does
not justify anyone, however, in leaning towards the
other side and assuming that, because it does not
achieve all it aims at, such an attitude on the part
of society is altogether harmless. The sexual life
of civilized man is seriously disabled, whatever we
may say; it sometimes makes an impression of
being a function in process of becoming atrophied,
just as organs like our teeth and our hair seem to
be. One is probably right in supposing that the
importance of sexuality as a source of pleasurable
sensations, i.e. as a means of fulfilling the purpose
of life, has perceptibly decreased.^ Sometimes one
imagines one perceives that it is not only the
oppression of cultiue, but something in the nature
of the function itself, that denies us full satisfaction

* Then Is a abort story, which I valued long ago, by a hig^y
sensitive writer, the Englishman, John Galsworthy, who to-day

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 77

and urges us in other directions. This may be an
error ; it is hard to decide.^

enjoys general recognition ; it is called ‘ The Apple Tree It
shows in a very moving and forcible way how there is no longer
any place in present-day civilized life for a simple natural love
between two hnman bemgs.

^ The followiag consideratioiis would support the view ex-
pressed above. Man. too, is an animal with an unmistalcably
bisexual disposition. The individual rep r esents a fusion of two
symmetncal halves, of which, according to many authorities, one
is purely male, the other female. It is equally possible that each
half was ongmally hermaphroditic. Sex is a biological fact which
is hard to evaluate psychologically, although it is of extraordinary
importance m mental life. We are accustomed to say that every
human being displays both male and female mstmctual impulses,
needs and attributes, but the characteristics of what is male
and female can only be demonstrated m anatomy, and not in
psychology. Where the latter is concerned, the antithesiB of sex
fades away into that of activity and passivity, and we far too
readily identify activity with mascuhmty and passivity with
feminuuty, a statement which 18 by no means universally confirmed
in the animal world. The theory of bisexuahty is still very obscure
and in psycho-analysis we must be painfully aware of the dis-
advantage we are under as long as it still remains nnconne<:ted
with the theory of instmcts. However this may be, if we assume
it to be a fact that each individual has both male and female
desires which need satisfaction m his sexual life, we shall be
prepared for the possibihty that these needs will not both be
gratified on the same object, and that they will mterfere with
each other, if they cannot be kept apart so that each impulse
flows mto a special channel smted for it. Another difficulty arises
from the orcumstance that so often a measure of direct aggres-
siveness is coupled with an erotic relationship, over and above its
inherent sadistic components. The love-object does not always
view these complications with the degree of understanding a)^
tolerance manifested by the peasant woman who complained that
her husband did not love her any more, because he had not beaten
her for a week.

The conjecture which leads furthest, however, is that— and

78 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

here we oome back to the remarks in ihe footnote on p. 66— the
whole of seroaUty and not merely anal erotiam la threatened with
falHng a victim to the organic repression consequent npon man's
adoption of the erect posture and the lowering in value of tiie
sense of smell ; so that since that time the sexual function has
been associated with a resistance not susceptible of further ex-
planation, which puts obstacles in Ihe way of full satiafaction and
forces it away from its sexual aim towards sublimations and dis-
placements of libido. I am aware that Blenler (in ' Der Sexnal-
widerstand JaMuch fOr psychoanalyhscke und psychopatho-
logtsehe Porschunggn, Bd. v., 1913) once pointed out the existence
of a fundamental tendency of this kind towards r^ecting sexual
life. All neurotics, and many others too, take exception to the
fact that ' inter urinas et faeces nascunur The gemtals, too,
excite the olfactory sense strongly in a way that many people
cannot tolerate and which spoils sexual mterconrse for them.
Thus we should find, as the deepest root of the sexual re p re ss ion
that marches with culture, the oigamc defence of the new form
of hfo that began with the erect posture against the earliest type
of animal existence — a result of scientific researches that comadea
in a curious way with often expressed vulgar prejudices. At the
present time, nevertheless, these results are but unconfirmed
possibilities, not yet scientifically substantiated. Nor should we
forget that, m spite of the undeniable diminution m the importance
of olfactory stimnh, there exist even in Europe races who prize
highly as aphrodisiacs the strong gemtal odours so objectionable to
us and who will not renounce them. (Cf . the reports of folklonstic
information obtamed by Iwan Bloch's ' Questionnaire ', appearing
under the title of ' tlber den Gemchsainn in der vita sexualis ' in
various volumes of Friednch S. Krauss’ Anthropopl^teia.)

V

P SYCHO -ANALYTIC work has shown that
these frustrations in respect of sexual life
are especially unendurable to the so-called
neurotics among us. These persons manufacture
substitute-gratifications for themselves in their
s5miptoms, which, however, are either painful in
themselves or become the cause of sufEering owing
to the diflSiciilties they create with the person’s
enviroiunent and society at large. It is easy to
understand the latter fact, but the former presents
us with a new problem. But culture demands
other sacrifices besides that of sexual gratifications.

We have regarded the difficulties in the develop-
ment of civilization as part of the general difficulty
accompanying all evolution, for we have traced
them to the inertia of libido, its disinclination to
relinquish an old position in favour of a new one.
It is much the same thing if we say that the conflict
between civilization and sexuality is caused by the
circumstance that sexual love is a relationship
between two people, in which a third can only be

79

8o CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

superfluous or disturbing, whereas civilization is
founded on relations between larger groups of
persons. When a love-relationship is at its height
no room is left for any interest in the surrounding
world ; the pair of lovers are sufficient unto them-
selves, do not even need the child they have in
common to make them happy. In no other case
does Eros so plainly betray the core of his being,
his aim of maldng one out of many; but when he has
achieved it in the proverbial way through the love
of two human beings, he is not willing to go further.

From aU this we might well imagine that a
civilized community could consist of pairs of in-
dividuals such as this, libidinally satisfied in each
other, and linked to all the others by work and
common interests. If this were so, culture would
not need to levy energy from sexuality. But such
a desirable state of things does not exist and never
has existed ; in actuality culture is not content
with such limited ties as these ; we see that it
endeavours to bind the members of the community
to one another by libidinal ties as well, that it
makes use of every means and favoms every avenue
by which powerful identifications can be created
among them, and that it exacts a heavy toll of aim-
inhibited libido in order to strengthen communities
by bonds of friendship between the members.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 8l

Restrictions upon sexual life are unavoidable if this
object is to be attained. But we cannot see the
necessity that forces culture along this path and
gives rise to its antagonism to sexuality. It must
be due to some disturbing influence not yet detected
by us.

We may find the clue in one of the so-called
ideal standards of civilized society. It runs: ‘Thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ’. It is world-
renowned, imdoubtedly older than Christianity
which parades it as its proudest profession, yet
certainly not veiy old ; in historical times men still
knew nothing of it. We will adopt a n^ve attitude
towards it, as if we were meeting it for the first time.
Thereupon we find ourselves unable to suppress a
feeling of astonishment, as at something uimatural.
Why should we do this ? What good is it to us ?
Above aU, how can we do such a thing ? How
could it possibly be done ? My love seems to me a
valuable thing that I have no right to throw away
without reflection. It imposes obligations on me
which I must be prepared to make sacrifices to
fulfil. If I love someone, he must be worthy of it in
some way or other. (1 am leaving out of account
now the use he may be to me, as well as his possible
significance to me as a sexual object ; neither of
these two kinds of relationship between us come

82 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

into question where the injunction to love my
neighbour is concerned.) He will be worthy of it if
he is so like me in important r^pects that I can love
myself in him ; worthy of it if he is so much more
perfect than I that 1 can love my ideal of myself in
him ; I must love him if he is the son of my friend,
since the pain my friend would fed if anything
untoward happened to him would be my pain — I
should have to share it. But if he is a stranger to
me and caimot attract me by any value he has in
hims elf or any significance he may have already
acquired in my emotional life, it will be hard for me
to love him. 1 shall even be doing wrong if I do,
for my love is valued as a privilege by all those
bdonging to me; it is an injustice to them if
I put a stranger on a levd with them. But if I
am to love him (with that kind of universal love)
simply because he, too, is a denizen of the earth,
like an insect or an earthworm or a grass-snake,
then I fear that but a small modicum of love
will fall to his lot and it would be impossible for
me to give him as much as by all the laws of
reason I am entitled to retain for mysdf . What
is the point of an injunction promulgated with
such solemnity, if reason does not recommend it
to us ?

When I look more dosdy I find still further

aVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 83

difficulties. Not merdy is this stranger on the
whole not worthy of love, but, to be hon^t, I must
confess he has more claim to my hostility, even to
my hatred. He does not seem to have the least
trace of love for me, does not show me the slightest
consideration. If it will do him any good, he has
no hesitation in injuring me, never even asking
himself whether the amount of advantage he gains
by it bears any proportion to the amoimt of wrong
done to me. What is more, he does not even need
to get an advantage from it ; if he can merely get
a little pleasure out of it, he thinks nothiug of
jeering at me, insulting me, slandering me, show-
ing his power over me; and the more secure he
feels himself, or the more helpless I am, with so
much more certainty can I expect this behaviour
from him towards me. If he behaved differently,
if he showed me consideration and did not molest
me, I should in any case, without the aforesaid
commandment, be willing to treat him similzirly.
If the high-sounding ordinance had run, ‘Love
thy neighbour as thy neighbour loves thee’, I
should not take objection to it. And there is a
second commandment that seems to me even more
incomprehensible, and arouses stiU stronger oppo-
sition in me. It is: ‘ Love thine enemies When I
think it over, however, I am wrong in treating it

84 aVIUZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

as a greater imposition. It is at bottom the same
thing - 1

I imagine now I hear a voice gravely adjuring
me : ‘ Just because thy neighbour is not worthy of
thy love, is probably full of enmity towards thee,
thou shouldst love him as thj^self I then perceive
the case to be like that of Credo quia absurdum.

Now it is, of course, very probable that my
neighbour, when he is commanded to love me as
himself, will answer exactly as I have done and
reject me for the same reasons. I hope he will not
have the same objective grounds for doing so, but
he will hope so as well. Even so, there are varia-
tions in men’s behaviour which ethics, disregarding
the fact that they are determined, classifies as
* good ’ and ‘ evil As long as these undeniable
variations have not been abolished, conformity to
the highest ethical stctndards constitutes a be-
trayal of the interests of culture, for it puts a

* A great poet may permit himself, at least in jest, to give
utterance to psychological troths that are heavily censured. Thus
Heine : ‘ Mine is the most peaceable disposition. My wishes are
a humble dwelling with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food,
milk and butter of the freshest, flowers at my windows, some
fine tan trees before my door; and if the go^ God wants to
make me completely happy, he wiU grant me the joy of seeing
some six or seven of my enemies hanging from these trees. With
my heart fuU of deep emotion I ahaU forgive them before they
die all the wrong they did me in their lifetime— true, one must
forgive one's enemies, but not until they are brought to execution.’
(Heine, Gadankm und EinflUk.)

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 85

direct premium on wickedness. One is irresist-
ibly reminded here of an incident in the Frrach
Chamber when capital punishment was being dis-
cussed ; the speech of a member who had pas-
sionately supported its abolition was being ap-
plauded with loud acclamation, when suddenly a
voice was heard calling out from the back of the
room, ' Que messieurs les assassins commencent ! ’
The bit of truth behind all this — one so eagerly
denied — is that men are not gentle, friendly
creatures wishing for love, who simply defend
themselves if they are attacked, but that a power-
ful measure of desire for aggression has to be
reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment.
The result is that their neighbour is to them not
only a possible helper or sexual object, but also a
temptation to them to gratify their aggressive-
ness on him, to exploit his capacity for work with-
out recompense, to use him sexually without his
consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him,
to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him.
Homo homini lupus ; who has the courage to dis-
pute it in the face of all the evidence in his own life
and in history? This aggressive cruelty usually
lies in wait for some provocation, or else it
steps into the service of some other purpose, the
aim of which might as well have been achieved by

86 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

milder measures. In circumstances that favour
it, when those forces in the mind which ordinarily
inhibit it cease to operate, it also manifests itself
spontaneously and reveals men as savage beasts to
whom the thought of sparing their own kind is
alien. Anyone who calls to mind the atrocities of
the early migrations, of the invasion by the Huns
or by the so-called Mongols under Jenghiz Khan
and Tamurlane, of the sack of Jerusalem by the
pious Crusaders, even indeed the horrors of the
last world-war, will have to bow his head humbly
before the truth of this view of man.

The existence of this tendency to aggression
which we can detect in ourselves and rightly pre-
sume to be present in others is the factor that dis-
turbs our relations with our neighbours and makes
it necessary for culture to institute its high de-
mands. Civilized society is perpetually menaced
with disintegration through this primary hostility
of men towards one another. Their interests in
their common work would not hold them to-
gether ; the passions of instinct are stronger than
reasoned interests. Culture has to call up every
possible reinforcement in order to erect barriers
against the aggressive instincts of men and hold
their manifestations in check by reaction-foimations
in men’s minds. Hence its system of methods by

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 87

which mankind is to be driven to identifications
and aim-inhibited love-relationships ; hence the
restrictions on sexual life ; and hence, too, its
ideal command to love one’s neighbour as oneself,
which is really justified by the fact that nothing
is so completely at variance with original human
nature cis this. With all its striving, this endeavour
of culture’s has so far not achieved very much.
Civilization expects to prevent the worst atrocities
of brutal violence by taking upon itself the right
to employ violence against criminals, but the law
is not able to lay hands on the more discreet and
subtle forms in which human aggressions are ex-
pressed. The time comes when every one of us
has to abandon the illusory anticipations with
which in our youth we regarded our fellow-men,
and when we realize how much hardship and suffer-
ing we have been caused in life through their ill-
will. It would be xmfair, however, to reproach
culture with tr 3 dng to eliminate all disputes and
competition from human concerns. These things
are undoubtedly indispensable ; but opposition is
not necessarily enmity, only it may b6 misused to
make an opening for it.

The Communists believe they have found a
way of delivering us from this evil. Man is whole-
heartedly good and friendly to his neighbour, they

88 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

say, but the system of private property has cor-
rupted his nature. The possession of private
property gives power to the individual and thence
the temptation arises to ill-treat his neighbour ;
the man who is excluded from the iK>ssession of
property is obliged to rebel in hostility against the
oppressor. If private property were abolished, all
valuables held in common and all allowed to share
in the enjoyment of them, ill-will and enmity
would disappear from among men. Since all
needs would be satisfied, none would have any
reason to regard another as an enemy ; all would
willingly undertake the work which is necessary.
I have no concern with any economic criticisms of
the communistic systan ; I cannot enquire into
whether the abolition of private property is ad-
vantageous and expedient.^ But I am able to
recognize that psychologically it is founded on an
untenable illusion. By abolishing private pro-
perty one deprives the htunan love of aggression

^ Anyone who has been through the misery of poverty in his
yonth, and has endured the indifference and arrogance oi those
who have possessions, should be exempt from the suspicion that
he has no understanding of or goodwill towards the endeavours
made to fight the economic inequality of men and all that it
leads to. To be sure, if an attempt is made to base this fight upon
an abstract demand for equahty for aU in the name of justice,
there is a very obvious objectirm to be made, namely, that nature
began the injustice by the highly unequal way m which she
endows individuals ph3mically and mentally, for which there is
no be^.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 89

of one of its instruments, a strong one undoubtedly,
but assuredly not the strongest. It in no way
alters the individual difierences in power and in-
fluence which are turned by aggressiveness to its
own use, nor does it change the nature of the in-
stinct in any way. This instinct did not arise as
the result of property ; it reigned almost supreme
in primitive times when possessions were still
extremely scanty ; it shows itself already in the
nursery when possessions have hardly grown out
of their original anal shape ; it is at the bottom of
all the relations of affection and love between
human beings — ^possibly with the single exception
of that of a mother to her male child. Suppose
that personal rights to material goods are done
away with, there still remain prerogatives in sexual
relationships, which must arouse the strongest
rancour and most violent enmity among men and
women who are otherwise equal. Let us suppose
this were also to be removed by instituting com-
plete liberty in sexual life, so that the family, the
germ-cell of culture, ceased to exist ; one could
not, it is true, foresee the new paths on which
cultural development might then proceed, but one
thing one would be bound to expect, and that is
that the ineffaceable feature of human nature
would follow wherever it led.

90 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Men clearly do not find it easy to do vdthout
satisfaction of this tendency to aggression that is in
them ; -when deprived of satisfaction of it they are
ill at ease. There is an advantage, not to be under-
valued, in the existence of smaller communities,
through which the aggressive instinct can find
an outlet in enmity towards those outside the
group. It is alwa}^ possible to unite considerable
numbers of men in love towards one another, so
long as there are still some remaining as objects
for aggressive manifestations. I once interested
mysdf in the peculiar fact that peoples whose
territories are adjacent, and are otherwise closdy
related, are always at feud with and ridiculing
each other, as, for instance, the Spaniards and the
Portuguese, the North and South Germans, the
English and the Scotch, and so on. I gave it the
name of ' narcissism in respect of minor differences ’,
which does not do much to explain it. One can
now see that it is a convenient and relatively
harmless form of satisfaction for aggressive tend-
encies, through which cohesion amongst the
members of a group is made easier. The Jewish
people, scattered in all directions as they are, have
in this way rendered services which deserve recog-
nition to the development of culture in the
countries where they settled ; but unfortunately

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS QI

not all the massacres of Jews in the Middle Ages
sufficed to procure peace and security for their
Christian contemporaries. Once the apostle Paul
had laid down universal love between all men as
the foundation of his Christian community, the
inevitable consequence in Christianity was the
utmost intolerance towards all who remained out-
side of it ; the Romans, who had not founded
their state on love, were not given to lack of
religious toleration, although religion was a con-
cern of the state, and the state was permeated
through and through with it. Neither was it an
unaccountable chance that the dream of a Ger-
man world-dominion evoked a complementary
movement towards anti-semitism ; and it is quite
intelligible that the attempt to establish a new
communistic type of culture in Russia should find
psychological support in the persecution of the
bourgeois. One only wonders, with some concern,
however, how the Soviets will manage when they
have exterminated their bourgeois entirely.

If civilization requires such sacrifices, not only of
sexuality but also of the aggressive tendencies in
mankind, we can better understand why it should
be so hard for men to feel happy in it. In actual
fact primitive man was better off in this respect, for
he knew nothing of any restrictions on his instincts.

92 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

As a set-o£E against this, bis prospects of enjo}dng
his happiness for any length of time were very
slight. Civilized man has exchanged some part of
his chances of happiness for a measure of security.
We will not forget, however, that in the primal
family only the head of it enjoyed this instinctual
freedom; the other monbers lived in slavish
thraldom. The antithesis between a minority
enjoying cultural advantages and a majority who
are robbed of them was therefore most extreme in
that primeval period of culture. With regard to
the primitive human types living at the present
time, careful investigation has revealed that their
instinctual life is by no means to be envied on
accoimt of its freedom ; it is subject to restrictions
of a difierent kind but perhaps even more rigorous
than is that of modem civilized man.

In rightly finding fault, as we thus do, with our
present state of civilization for so inadequately
providing us with what we require to make us
happy in life, and for the amount of suffering of a
probably avoidable nature it lays us open to — ^in
doing our utmost to lay bare the roots of its de-
ficiencies by our unsparing critidsms, we are un-
doubtedly exercising our just rights and not
blowing ourselves enemies of culture. We may
expect that in the course of time changes will be

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 93

carried out in our civilization so that it becomes
more satisf3dng to our needs and no longer open
to the reproaches we have made against it. But
perhaps we shall also accustom ourselves to the idea
that there are certain difficulties inherent in the
very nature of culture which will not 5deld to any
efforts at reform. Over and above the obligations
of putting restrictions upon our instincts, which we
see to be inevitable, we are imminently threatened
with the dangers of a state one may call 'la
misire psychologique ' of groups. This danger is
most menacing where the social forces of cohesion
consist predominantly of identifications of the
individuals in the group with one another, whilst
leading personalities fail to acquire the significance
that should fall to them in the process of group-
formation.^ The state of civilization in America
at the present day offers a good opportunity for
studying this injurious effect of civilization which
we have reason to dread. But I will resist the
temptation to enter upon a criticism of American
culture ; I have no desire to give the impression
that I would employ American methods mysdf .

» Cf. Group Poychokgy and tfu Analysis of ths Ego {ign).
London : Hogarth Press, 1922.

VI

N ever before in any of my previous writings
have I had the feeling so strongly as I have
now that what 1 am describing is common
knowledge, that I am requisitioning paper and ink,
and in due course the labour of compositors and
printers, in order to expound things that in them-
selves are obvious. For this reason, if it should
appear that the recognition of a special independent
instinct of aggression would entail a modification of
the psycho-anal5d;ical theory of instincts, I should
be glad enough to seize upon the idea.

We shall see that this is not so, that it is merely
a matter of coming to closer quarters with a con-
clusion to which we long ago committed ourselves
and following it out to its logical consequences.
The whole of anal5^ic theory has evolved gradu-
ally enough, but the theory of instincts has groped
its way forward imder greater difficulties than any
other part of it. And yet a theory of instincts was so
indispensable for the rest that something had to
be adopted in place of it. In my utter perplexity

94

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 95

at the beginning, I took as my starting-point the
poet-philosopher Schiller’s aphorism, that himger
and love make the world go round. Hunger would
serve to represent those instincts which aim at
preservation of the individual; love seeks for
objects ; its chief function, which is favoured in
every way by nature, is preservation of the species.
Thus first arose the contrast between ego instincts
and object instincts. For the energy of the latter
instincts and exclusively for them I introduced the
term libido ; an antithesis was thus formed be-
tween the ego instincts and the libidinal instincts
directed towards objects, i.e. love in its widest
sense. One of these object instincts, the sadistic,
certainly stood out from the rest in that its aim was
so very unloving ; moreover, it clearly allied itself
in many of its aspects with the ego instincts, and its
dose kinship with instincts of mastery without any
libidinal purpose could not be concealed, but these
ambiguities could be overcome ; in spite of them,
sadism plainly belonged to sexual life — ^the game of
crudty could take the place of the game of love.
Neurosis appeared as the outcome of a struggle
between the interests of self-preservation and the
claims of libido, a struggle in which the ego was
victorious, but at the price of great suffering and
renunciations.

96 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Every analyst will admit that none of this even
now reads like a statement long since recognized as
erroneous. All the same, modifications had to be
made as our researches advanced from the re-
pressed to the reprising, from the object instincts
to the ego. A cardinal point in this advance was
the introduction of the concept of narcissism, i.e.
the idea that libido cathects the ego itself, that its
first dwelling-place was in the ego, and that the
latter remains to some extent its permanent head-
quarters. This narcissistic libido turns in the
direction of objects, thus becoming object-libido,
and can transform itself back into narcissistic libido.
The concept of narcissism made it possible to con-
sider the traumatic neuroses, as well as many
diseases bordering on the psychoses, and also the
latter themselves, from the psycho-analytic angle.
It was not necessary to abandon the view that the
transference-neuroses are attempts on the part of
the ego to guard itself against sexuality, but the
concept of the libido was jeopardized. Since the
ego-instincts were foimd to be libidinal as well, it
seemed for a time inevitable that libido should
become synon3mious with instinctual energy in
general, as C. G. Jung had previously advocated.
Yet there still remained in me a kind of conviction,
for which as yet there were no grounds, that the

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 97

instincts could not all be of the same nature. I
made the next step in Beyond the Pleasure Principle
(1920), when the repetition -compulsion and the
conservative character of instinctual life first struck
me. On the basis of speculations concerning the
origin of life and of biological parallels, I drew the
conclusion that, beside the instinct preserving the
organic substance and binding it into ever larger
units,^ there must exist another in antithesis to
this, which would seek to dissolve these units and
reinstate their antecedent inorganic state; that
is to say, a death instinct as well as Eros ; the
phenomena of life would then be explicable from
the interplay of the two and their counteracting
effects on each other. It weis not easy, however,
to demonstrate the working of this hypothetical
death instinct. The manifestations of Eros were
conspicuous and audible enough ; one might assume
that the death instinct worked silently within the
organism towards its disintegration, but that, of
course, was no proof. The idea that part of the
instinct became directed towards the outer world
and then showed itself as an instinct of aggression
and destruction carried us a step further. The

^ The contradiction between the tireless tendency of Eros to
spread ever further and the general conservative nature of the
instincts here becomes very noticeable , it would serve as the
■tarting-pomt of aiquines into further problems.

98 OmiZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

instinct would thus itself have been pressed into
the service of Eros, in that the oi:ganism would be
destroying something animate or inanimate outside
itself instead of itself. Conversely, any cessation
of this flow outwards must have the eflect of
intensifying the self-destruction which in any
case would alwa}^ be going on within. From this
example one could then surmise that the two kinds
of instincts seldom — ^perhaps never — appear in
isolation, but alwa}^ mingle with each other in
different, very var3dng proportions, and so make
themselves umecognizable to us. Sadism, long
since known to us as a component-instinct of
sexuality, would represent a particularly strong
admixture of the instinct of destruction into the
love impulse ; while its counterpart, masochism,
would be an alliance between sexuality and the
destruction at work within the self, in consequence
of which the otherwise imperceptible d^tructive
trend became directly evident and palpable.

The assumption of the existence of a death instinct
or a destruction instinct has roused opposition even
in anal3dical circles ; I know that there is a great
tendency to ascribe all that is dangerous and hostile
in love rather to a fundamental bipolarity in its own
nature. The conceptions I have summarized here
I first put forward only tentatively, but in the

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 99

course of time they have won such a hold over me
that I can no longer think in any other way. To
my mind they are theoretically far more fruitful
than any others it is possible to employ; they
provide us with that simplification, without either
ignoring or doing violence to the facts, which is
what we strive after in scientific work. I know that
we have alwa}^ had before our eyes manifestations
of the destruction instinct fused with erotism,
directed outwards and inwards in sadism and
masochism ; but I can no longer understand how
we could have overlooked the universality of non-
erotic aggression and destruction, and could have
omitted to give it its due significance in our inter-
pretation of life. (It is true that the destructive
trend that is directed inwards, when it is not
erotically tinged, usually eludes our perceptions.)
I can remember my own defensive attitude when
the idea of an instinct of destruction first made its
appearance in psycho-analytical literature and how
long it took until I became accessible to it. That
others should have shown the same resistance, and
still show it, surprises me less. Those who love fairy-
tales do not like it when people speak of the innate
tendencies in mankind towards aggression, destruc-
tion and, in addition, cruelty. For God has made
them in his own image, with his own perfections;

lOO CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

no one wants to be reminded how hard it is to re-
concile the undeniable existence — ^in spite of all the
protestations of Christian Science— of evil with his
omnipotence and supreme goodness. The devil is, in
fact, the best way out in acquittal of Gk)d ; he can
be used to play the same economic rdle of outlet as
Jews in the world of Aryan ideals. But even so,
one can just as well hold God responsible for the
existence of the devil as for the evil he personifies.
In view of these difficulties, it is expedient for every
man to make humble obeisance on suitable occa-
sions in honour of the high-minded nature of men ;
it will assist him to become universally beloved and
much shall be forgiven unto him on account of it.^

i In Goethe’s Mephistopbeles we have a quite exceptionally
atrilong identification oi the pnnaple of evil with the instinct of
destruction :

‘ All entities that be
Deserve their end — ^nonentity.'

‘ So all that yon name sin, destruction —

Wickedness, briefly — ^proves to be
The native element for me.’

As his adversary, the devil himself ates not what is holy and
good, but the power m nature working towards the creation and
renewal of life — ^that is, Eros.

' From air, from water, germs m thousands.

As from the soil, break forth, break free.

Dry, wet, warm, cold — a pullulation 1
Had I not laid on flame a reservation,

Nothing were set apart for me.’

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS lOI

The name libido can again be used to denote the
manifestations of the power of Eros in contra-
distinction to the energy of the death instinct.^
We must confess that it is more difficult for us
to detect the latter, and to a great extent we can
merely conjecture its existence as a background
to Eros, also that it eludes us wherever it is not
betrayed by a fusion with Eros. In sadism, where
it bends the erotic aim to its own will and yet at the
same time gratifies the sexual craving completely,
we can obtain the clearest insight into its nature
and its relation to Eros, But even where it shows
itself without any sexual purpose, even in the
blindest frenzy of destructiveness, one cannot
ignore the fact that satisfaction of it is accompanied
by an extraordinarily intense narcissistic enjoy-
ment, due to the fulfilment it brings to the ego
of its oldest omnipotence-wishes. The instinct of
destruction, when tempered and harnessed (as it
were, inhibited in its aim) and directed towards
objects, is compelled to provide the ego with satis-
faction of its needs and with power over nature.
Since the assumption of its existence is based
essentially on theoretical grounds, it must be con-
fessed that it is not entirely proof against theoretical

^ Our present point of view can be rougbly expres se d in the
statement that libido participates in every instinctaal manifesta-
tion, but that not everything in that manifestation is libido.

102 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

objections. But this is how things appear to us
now in the present state of our knowledge ; future
research and reflection will undoubtedly bring
further light which will decide the question.

In all that follows I take up the standpoint that
the tendency to aggression is an innate, inde-
pendent, instinctual disposition in man, and I
come back now to the statement that it constitutes
the most powerful obstacle to culture. At one
point in the course of this discussion the idea took
possession of us that culture was a peculiar process
passing over human life and we are still imder the
influence of this idea. We may add to this that
the process proves to be in the service of Eros,
which aims at binding together single human indi-
viduals, then families, then tribes, races, nations,
into one great imity, that of humanity. Why this
has to be done we do not know ; it is simply the
work of Eros. These masses of men must be boimd
to one another libidinally ; necessity alone, the
advantages of common work, would not hold them
together. The natural instinct of aggressiveness in
man, the hostility of each one against all and of
all against each one, opposes this programme of
civilization. This instinct of aggression is the
derivative and main representative of the death
instinct we have found alongside of Eros, sharing

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS IO3

his rule over the earth. And now, it seems to me,
the meaning of the evolution of culture is no longer
a riddle to us. It must present to us the struggle
between Eros and Death, between the instincts of
life and the instincts of destruction, as it works
itself out in the human species. This struggle is
what all life essentially consists of and so the evolu-
tion of civilization may be simply described as
the struggle of the human species for existence.^
And it is this battle of the Titans that our nurses
and governesses try to compose with their lullaby-
song of Heaven 1

» And wo may probably add more predaely that its form was
necessarily detommed after some definite event which still
remains to be discovered.

VII

W HY do the animals, Idn to ourselves, not
manifest any such cultural struggle?
Oh, we don’t know. Very probably
certain of them, bees, ants, termites, had to strive
for thousands of centuries before they fotmd the
way to those state institutions, that division of
functions, those restrictions upon individuals,
which we admire them for to-day. It is character-
istic of our present state that we know by our own
feelings that we should not think ourselves happy
in any of these communities of the animal world,
or in any of the rdles they delegate to individuals.
With other animal species it may be that a tem-
porary deadlock has been reached between the
influences of their environment and the instincts
contending within them, so that a cessation of
development has taken place. In primitive man a
fresh access of libido may have kindled a new spurt
of energy on the part of the instinct of destruction.
There are a great many questions in all this to
which as yet we have no answer.

104

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS IO5

Another question concerns us more closely now.
What means does civilization make use of to hold
in check the aggressiveness that opposes it, to make
it harmless, perhaps to get rid of it ? Some of
these measures we have already come to know,
though not yet the one that is apparently the most
important. We can study it in the evolution of the
individual. What happens in him to render his
craving for aggression innocuous ? Something
very curious, that we should never have guessed
and that yet seems simple enough. The aggressive-
ness is introjected, ‘ internalized ' ; in fact, it is sent
back where it came from, i.e. directed against the
ego. It is there taken over by a part of the ego
that distinguishes itself from the rest as a super-
ego, and now, in the form of ‘ conscience ’, exercises
the same propensity to harsh aggressiveness against
the ego that the ego would have liked to enjoy
against others. The tension between the strict
super-ego and the subordinate ego we call the sense
of guilt ; it manifests itself as the need for punish-
ment. Civilization therefore obtains the mastery
over the dangerous love of aggression in individuals
by enfeebling and disarming it and setting up an
institution within their minds to keep watch over
it, like a garrison in a conquered city.

As to the origin of the sense of guilt, analysts

I06 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

have different views from those of the pssrchologists ;
nor is it easy for anal3rsts to explain it either. First
of all, when one asks how a sense of guilt arises in
an3^ne, one is told something one cannot dilute :
people feel guilty (pious people call it ‘ sinful ’)
when they have done something they know to be
‘ bad But then one sees how little this answer
tdls one. Perhaps after some hesitation one will
add that a person who has not actually committed
a bad act, but has merely become aware of the
intention to do so, can also hold himself guilty ;
and then one will ask why in this case the intention
is counted as equivalent to the deed. In both
cases, however, one is presupposing that wickedness
has already been recognized as reprehensible, as
something that ought not to be put into execution.
How is this judgement arrived at ? One may reject
the suggestion of an original — as one might say,
natural — capacity for discriminating between good
and evil. Evil is often not at all that which would
injure or endanger the ego ; on the contrary, it can
also be something that it dedres, that would give it
pleasure. An extraneous influence is evidently at
work ; it is this that decides what is to be called
good and bad. Since their own feelings would not
have led men along the same path, they must have
had a motive for obeying this extraneous influence.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS IO7

It is easy to discover this motive in man's helpless-
ness and dependence upon others ; it can best be
designated the dread of losing love. If he loses the
love of others on whom he is dependent, he will
forfeit also their protection against many dangers,
and above all he runs the risk that this stronger
person will show his superiority in the form of
punishing him. What is bad is, therefore, to begin
with, whatever causes one to be threatened with a
loss of love ; because of the dread of this loss, one
must desist from it. That is why it makes little
difference whether one has already committed the
bad deed or only intends to do so ; in either case
the danger begins only when the authority has
found it out, and the latter would behave in the
same way in both cases.

We call this state of mind a ' bad conscience * ;
but actually it does not deserve this name, for at
this stage the sense of guilt is obviously only the
dread of losing love, ' social ' anxiety. In a little
child it can never be anything else, but in many
adults too it has only changed in so far as the larger
human commimity takes the place of the father or
of both parents. Consequently such people habitu-
ally permit themselves to do any bad deed that
procures them something they want, if only they
are sure that no authority will discover it or make

I08 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

them suffer for it ; their anxiety relates only to the
possibility of detection.' Present-day society has
to take into account the prevalence of this state
of mind.

A great change takes place as soon as the
authority has been internalized by the develop-
ment of a super-ego. The manifestations of
conscience are then raised to a new level ; to be
accurate, one should not call them conscience and
sense of gmlt before this.* At this point the dread
of discovery ceases to operate and also once for all
any difference between doing evil and wishing to do
it, since nothing is hidden from the super-ego, not
even thoughts. The real seriousness of the situation
has vanished, it is true ; for the new authority, the
super-ego, has no motive, as far as we know, for ill-
treating the ego with which it is itself closely bound
up. But the influence of the genetic derivation of
these things, which causes what has been outlived
and surmoimted to be re-lived, manifests itself so
that on the whole things remain as they were at the
beginning. The super-ego torments the sinful ego
with the same feelings of dread and watches for
opportunities whereby the outer world can be made
to punish it.

* One is reminded of Ronesean's famons mandarin I

* Every reaaonable person -will understand and take into
account t^t in this descriptive survey things that m reality occur

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS IO9

At this second stage of development, conscience
exhibits a peculiarity which was absent in the first
and is not very easy to accotmt for. That is, the
more righteous a man is the stricter and more
suspicious will his conscience be, so that ulti-
mately it is precisely those people who have
carried holiness farthest who reproach themselves
with the deepest sinfulness. This means that
virtue forfeits some of ha: promised reward ; the
submissive and abstemious ego does not enjoy the
trust and confidence of its mentor, and, as it seems,
strives in vain to earn it. Now, to this some people
will be ready to object that these difficulties are
artificialities. A relatively strict and vigilant con-
science is the very sign of a virtuous man, and
though saints may proclaim themselves sinners,
they are not so wrong, in view of the temptations
of instinctual gratifications to which they are
peculiarly liable — since, as we know, temptations
do but inciease under constant privation, whereas
they subside, at any rate temporarily, if they are
sometimes gratified. The field of ethics is rich in
problems, and another of the facts we find here is

by gradual transitions are sharply differentiated and that tiie
mere existence of a super-ego is not the only factor concerned,
but also its relative strength and sphere of influence. All that has
been said above in regard to conscience and guilt, moreover, is
common knowledge and practically undisputed.

110 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

that misfortune, i.e. external deprivation, greatly
intensifies the strength of conscience in the super-
^o. As long as things go well with a man, his
conscience is lenient and lets the ego do all kinds
of tilings ; when some calamity befalls, he holds an
inquisition within, discovers his sin, heightens the
standards of his conscience, imposes abstinences
on himself and punishes himself with penances.^
Whole peoples have acted in this way and still do
so. But this is easily explained from the original
infantile stage of conscience which, as we thus see,
is not abandoned after the introjection into the
super-ego, but persists alongside and behind the
latter. Fate is fdt to be a substitute for the
agency of the parents : adversity means that one
is no longer loved by this highest power of all, and,
threatened by this loss of love, one humbles one-
self again before the rqiresentative of the parents
in the super-ego, which in happier days one had
tried to disregard. This becomes especially clear
when destiny is looked upon in the strictly re-
ligious sense as the expression of God's will and

X nils increased sensitivity of morals in consequence of ill-luck
has been illustrated by Mark Twain m a delicious little story :
The First Melon I ever Stole. This melon, as it happened, was un-
ripe. I heard Mark Twain tdl the story himself m one of his
lectures. After he had given out the title, he stopped and asked
hinnwH in a doubtful way : ' Was it the first ? ’ This was the
whole story.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS III

nothing else. The people of Israel believed them-
selves to be God’s favourite child, and when the
great Father hurled visitation after visitation upon
them, it still never shook them in this belief or
caused them to doubt his power and his justice ;
they proceeded instead to bring their prophets
into the world to declare their sinfulness to them
and out of their sense of guilt they constructed
the stringent commandments of their priestly re-
ligion. It is curious how differently a savage be-
haves I If he has had bad fortune, he does not
throw the blame on himself, but on his fetish, who
has plainly not done his duty by him, and he be-
labours it instead of punishing himself.

Hence we know of two sources for feelings of
guilt : that arising from the dread of authority
and the later one from the dread of the super-ego.
The first one compels us to renounce instinctual
gratification ; the other presses over and above
this towards punishment, since the persistence of
forbidden wishes cannot be concealed from the
super-ego. We have also heard how the severity
of the super-ego, the rigour of conscience, is to be
explained. It simply carries on the severity of
external authority which it has succeeded and to
some extent replaced. We see now how renuncia-
tion of instinctual gratification is related to the

II2 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

sense of guilt. Originally, it is true, renunciation
is the consequence of a dread of external author-
ity ; one gives up pleasures so as not to lose its
love. Having made this renunciation, one is
quits with authority, so to speak ; no feeling of
guilt should remain. But with the dread of the
super-ego the case is different. Renunciation of
gratification does not suffice here, for the wish
persists and is not capable of being hidden from
the super-ego. In spite of the renunciations made,
feelings of guilt will be experienced, and this is a
great disadvantage economically of the erection
of the super-ego, or, as one may say, of the forma-
tion of conscience. Renunciation no longer has a
completely absolving effect ; virtuous restraint is
no longer rewarded by the assurance of love ; a
threatened external unhappiness — ^loss of love and
punishment meted out by external authority — ^has
been exchanged for a lasting inner unhappiness,
the tension of a sense of guilt.

These interrelations are so complicated and at
the same time so important that, in spite of the
dangers of repetition, 1 will consider them again
from another angle. The chronological sequence
would thus be as follows: first, instinct-renuncia-
tion due to dread of an aggression by external
authority — ^this is, of course, tantamoimt to the

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS II3

dread of loss of love, for love is a protection against
these punitive aggressions. Then follows the erec-
tion of an internal authority, and instinctual re-
nunciation due to dread of it — ^that is, dread of
conscience. In the second case, there is the
equivalence of wicked acts and wicked intentions ;
hence comes the sense of guilt, the need for
punishment. The aggressiveness of conscience
carries on the aggressiveness of authority. Thus
far aU seems to be clear ; but how can we find a
place in this scheme for the effect produced by
misfortune {i.e. renunciations externally imposed),
for the effect it has of increasing the rigour of
conscience ? how account for the exceptional
stringency of conscience in the best men, those
least given to rebel against it ? We have already
explained both these peculiarities of conscience, but
probably we still have an impression that these
explanations do not go to the root of the matter,
and that they leave something stiU unexplained.
And here at last comes in an idea which is quite
peculiar to psycho-analysis and alien to ordinary
ways of thinking . Its nature enables us to under-
stand why the whole matter necessarily seemed
so confused and obscure to us. It tells us this ;
in the b^pnning conscience (more correctly, the
anxiety which later became conscience) was the

II4 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

cause of instinctual renunciation, but later this
rdation is reversed. Every renunciation then be-
comes a d3maniic fount of conscience ; every fresh
abandonment of gratification increases its severity
and intolerance ; and if we could only bring it
better into harmony with what we already know
about the development of conscience, we should
be tempted to make the following paradoxical
statement : Conscience is the result of instinctual
renunciation, or : Renunciation (externally im-
posed) gives rise to conscience, which then de-
mands further renunciations.

The contradiction between this proposition and
our previous knowledge about the genesis of con-
science is not in actual fact so very great, and we
can see a way in which it may be still further
reduced. In order to state the problem more
easily, let us select the example of the instinct of
aggression, and let us suppose that the renunciation
in question is always a remmciation of aggression.
This is, of course, merely a provisional assumption.
The effect of instinctual renunciation on con-
sci«ice then operates as follows : every impulse of
aggression which we omit to gratify is tsiken over by
the super-ego and goes to heighten its aggressive-
ness (against the ego). It does not fit in well
with this that the original aggressiveness of con-

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS II5

science should represent a continuance of the
rigour of external authority, and so have nothing
to do with renunciation. But we can get rid of
this discrepancy if we presume a different origin
for the first quantum of aggressiveness with which
the super-ego was endowed. When authority pre-
vented the child from enjoying the first but most
important gratifications of all, aggressive im-
pulses of considerable intensity must have been
evoked in it, irrespective of the particular nature
of the instinctual deprivations concerned. The
child must necessarily have had to give up the
satisfaction of these revengeful aggressive wishes.
In this situation, in which it is economically so
hard pressed, it has recourse to certain mechan-
isms well known to us ; by the process of identifica-
tion it absorbs into itself the invulnerable authority,
which then becomes the super-ego and comes into
possession of all the aggressiveness which the
child would gladly have exercised against it. The
child’s ego has to content itself with the unhappy
r 61 e of the authority — ^the father — ^who has been
thus degraded. It is, as so often, a reversal of the
original situation, ‘ If I were father and you my
child, I would treat you badly The relation
between super-ego and ego is a reproduction, dis-
torted by a wish, of the real relations between the

Il6 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

ego, before it was subdivided, and an external
object. That is also typical The essential differ-
ence, however, is that the original severity of the
super-ego does not— or not so much — ^represent
the severity which has been experienced or antici-
pated from the object, but expresses the child’s
own aggressiveness towards the latter. If this is
correct, one could truly assert that conscience is
formed in the beginning from the suppression of an
aggressive impulse and strengthened as time goes
on by each fresh suppression of the kind.

Now, which of these two theories is the true
one ? The earlier, which seemed genetically so
unassailable, or the new one, which rounds off our
theories in such a welcome manner ? Clearly,
they are both justified, and by the evidence, too,
of direct observation ; they do not contradict each
other, and even coincide at one point, for the
child’s revengeful aggressiveness will be in part
provoked by the amount of punishing aggression
that it anticipates from the father. Experience
has shown, however, that the severity which a
child’s super-ego develops in no way corresponds
to the severity of the treatment it has itself ex-
perienced.^ It seems to be independent of the

* As has nghtly been emphasized by Melanie Klein and other
Englidi writers.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS II7

latter ; a child which has been very leniently
treated can acquire a very strict conscience. But
it would also be wrong to exaggerate this inde-
pendence ; it is not difficult to assure oneself that
strict upbringing also has a strong influence on the
formation of a child’s super-ego. It comes to this,
that the formation of the super-ego and the de-
velopment of conscience are determined in part by
innate constitutional factors and in part by the
influence of the actual environment ; and that is
in no way surprising — on the contrary, it is the
invariable aetiological condition of all such pro-

It may also be said that when a child reacts
to the first great instinctual deprivations with
an excessive aggressiveness and a corresponding

> In his Psychoanalyse der GesamtpersOnltchkeif, 1927, Frans
Alexander has, in connection with Aichhom’s study of dissocial
behaviour in children, discussed the two main types of pathogenic
methods of traimng, that of excessive seventy and of spoilmg.
The * unduly lement and mdulgent ’ father fosters the develop-
ment of an over-stnct super-^ because, m face of the love
which is showered on it, the child has no other way of disposing of
its aggressiveness than to turn it inwards. In neglected children
who grow up without any love the tension between ego and
super-ego is lacking ; their aggressions can be directed externally.
Apart from any constitutional factor which may be present,
therefore, one may say that a strict conscience arises from the
co-operation of two factors in the environment : the deprivation
of instinctual gratification which evokes the child’s aggressive-
nesB, and the love it receives which turns this aggressiveness
inwards, where it is taken over by the super-ego.

Il8 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

strictness of its super-ego, it is thereby following
a phylogenetic prototype, unheedful of what re-
action would in reality be justified ; for the father
of primitive times was certainly terrifying, and one
may safdy attribute the utmost degree of aggres-
siveness to him. The diSerences between the two
theories of the genesis of conscience are thus still
further diminished if one passes from individual to
phylogenetic development. But then, on the other
hand, we find a new important difference between
the two processes. We cannot disregard the con-
clusion that man’s sense of guilt has its origin in
the Oedipus complex and was acquired when the
father was killed by the association of the brothers.
At that time the aggression was not suppressed
but carried out, and it is this same act of aggres-
sion whose suppression in the child we regard as
the source of feelings of guilt. Now, I should not
be surprised if a reader were to cry out angrily :
‘ So it makes no difference whether one does kill
one’s father or does not, one gets a fe eling of guilt
in either case I Here I should tbinlf one may be
allowed some doubts. Either it is not true that
guilt is evoked by suppressed aggressiveness or
else the whole story about the father-murder is a
romance, and primeval man did not kill his father
any more often than people do nowada}^. Be-

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS IIQ

sides this, if it is not a romance but a plausible
piece of history, it would only be an instance of
what we all expect to happen, namely, that one
feels guilty because one has really done something
which cannot be justified. And what we are all
waiting for is for psycho-analysis to give us an
explanation of this reaction, which at any rate is
something that happens every day.'

This is true, and we must make good the omis-
sion. There is no great mystery about it either.
When one has feelings of guilt after one has com-
mitted some crime and because of it, this feeling
should more properly be called remorse. It re-
lates only to the one act, and clearly it presupposes
that conscience, the capacity for feelings of guilt,
was already in existence before the deed. Re-
morse of this kind can, therefore, never help us
to find out the source of conscience and feelings
of guilt in general. In these everyday instances
the course of events is usually as follows : an in-
stinctual need acquires the strength to achieve ful-
filment in spite of conscience, the strength of which
also has its limits, whereupon the inevitable re-
duction of the need after satisfaction restores the
earlier balance of forces. Psycho-anal5rsis is quite
justified, therefore, in excluding the case of a sense
of guilt through remorse from this discussion, how-

120 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

ever frequently it may occur and however great its
importance may be practically.

But if man’s sense of guilt goes back to the
murder of the father, that was undoubtedly an
instance of ‘ remorse and yet are we to suppose
that there were no conscience and feelings of
guilt before the act on that occasion ? If so,
where did the remorse come from then ? This
instance must explain to us the riddle of the sense
of guilt and so make an end of our difficulties.
And it will do so, as I believe. This remorse was
the result of the very earliest primal ambivalence
of feelings towards the father : the sons hated him,
but they loved him too ; after their hate against
him had been satisfied by their aggressive acts,
their love came to expression in their remorse
about the deed, set up the super-ego by identifica-
tion with the father, gave it the father’s power to
punish as he would have done the aggression they
had performed, and created the restrictions which
should prevent a repetition of the deed. And since
impulses to aggressions against the father were
repeated in the next graierations, the feelings of
guilt, too, persisted, and were further reinforced
every time an aggression was suppressed anew and
made over to the super-ego. At this point, it
seems to me, we can at last clearly perceive the

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I2I

part played by love in the origin of conscience and
the fatal inevitableness of the sense of guilt. It
is not really a decisive matter whether one has
killed one’s father or abstained from the deed ;
one must feel guilty in either case, for guilt is the
expression of the conflict of ambivalence, the
eternal struggle between Eros and the destructive
or death instinct. This conflict is engendered as
soon as man is confronted with the task of living
with his fellows ; as long as he knows no other
form of life in common but that of the family, it
must express itself in the Oedipus complex, cause
the development of conscience and create the first
feelings of guilt. When mankind tries to institute
wider forms of commimal life, the same conflict
continues to arise — ^in forms derived from the past
— and intensified so that a further reinforcement of
the sense of guilt results. Since culture obeys an
inner erotic impulse which bids it bind mankind
into a closely knit mass, it can achieve this aim
only by means of its vigilance in fomenting an
ever-increasing sense of guilt. That which began
in relation to the father ends in relation to the
community. If civilization is an inevitable course
of development from the group of the family to the
group of humanity as a whole, then an intensifica-
tion of the sense of guilt — ^resulting from the innate

122 CIVELIZATION AKD ITS DISCONTENTS

conflict of ambivalence, from the eternal struggle
between the love and the death trends — ^will be
inextricably bound up with it, until perhaps the
sense of guilt may swdl to a magnitude that indi-
viduals can hardly support. One is reminded of
the telling accusation made by the great poet
against the ' heavenly forces ' :

Ye set our feet on this life’s road,

Ye watch our guilty, erring courses.

Then leave us, bowed beneath our load.

For earth its every debt enforces.^

And one may heave a sigh at the thought that
it is vouchsafed to a few, with hardly an effort,
to salve from the whirlpool of their own emotions
the deepest truths, to which we others have to
force our way, ceaselessly groping amid torturing
uncertainties.

* Goethe, WtlMm Meister, The Song of the Harper.

VIII

O N reaching the end of such a journey as
this, the author must beg his readers to
pardon him for not having been a more
skilful guide, not sparing them bleak stretches of
country at times and laborious detours at others.
There is no doubt that it could have been done
better. I will now try to make some amends.

First of all, I suspect the reader feels that the
discussion about the sense of guilt oversteps its
proper boundaries in this essay and takes up too
much space, so that the rest of the subject-matter,
which is not alwajrs closely coimected with it, gets
pushed on one side. This may have spoilt the
composition of the work ; but it faithfully corre-
sponds to my intention to represent the sense of
guilt as the most important problem in the evolu-
tion of culture, and to convey that the price of pro-
gress in civilization is paid in forfeiting happiness
through the heightening of the sense of guilt.^

* ‘ Tlius conscience does make cowards of ns all. . . .’

That the npbnnging of 3^oang people at the present day con-
ceals from them the part sexuality will play in their lives is not
183

124 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

What sounds puzzling in this statement, which
is the final conclusion of our whole investiga>
tion, is probably due to the quite peculiar relation
— as yet completely une3q)lained — the sense of
guilt has to our consciousness. In the common
cases of remorse which we think normal it becomes
clearly perceptible to consciousness ; indeed, we
often speak of ‘ consciousness of guilt ’ instead of
sense of guilt. In our study of the neuroses, in
which we have found invaluable clues towards an
understanding of normal people, we find some very
contradictory states of affairs in this respect. In
one of these maladies, the obsessional neurosis, the
sense of guUt makes itsdf loudly heard in con-
sciousness; it dominates the dinical picture as
well as the patient’s life and lets hardly anything
else appear alongside of it. But in most of the
other t 5 q)es and forms of neurosis it remains com-

ihe only reproach we are obliged to bring against it. It offends
too in not preparing them for the aggressions of which they are
destined to become the objects. Sendmg the young out mto life
with such a false p8)rchological orientation is as if one were to
eqmp people going on a Polar expedition with summer clothing
and maps of the Italian lakes. One can clearly see that ethical
standards are being misused in a way. The strictness of these
standards would not do much harm if education were to say :
' This is how men ought to be in order to be happy and mulra
others happy, but you have to reckon with their not being so.’ In-
stead of this the young are made to believe that eveiyone else con-
forms to the standard of ethics, t. 0 . that everyone else is good. And
then on this is based the demand that the young shall be so too.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 125

pletely unconscious, vdthout its effect being any
less great, however. Our patients do not believe
us when we ascribe an ‘unconscious sense of guilt’
to them ; in order to become even moderately in-
telligible to them we have to explain that the sense
of guilt expresses itself in an unconscious seeking
for punishment. But its connection with the
form of the neurosis is not to be over-estimated;
even in the obsessional neurosis there are people
who are not aware of their sense of guilt or who
perceive it only as a tormenting uneasiness or kind
of anxiety and then not imtil they are prevented
from canying out certain actions. We ought some
day to be able at last to understand these things;
as yet we cannot. Here perhaps is the place to
remark that at bottom the sense of guilt is nothing
but a topographical variety of anxiety, and that
in its later phases it coincides completely with the
dread of the super-ego. The relation of anxiety
to consciousness, moreover, is characterized by
the same extraordinary variations. Somewhere or
other there is always anxiety hidden behind all
s5mptoms ; at one moment, however, it sweeps
into consciousness, drowning everything else with
its clamour, and at the next it secretes itself so
completely that we are forced to speak of un-
conscious anxiety — or if we want to have a cleaner

126 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

(XHiscience ps}rdiologicaIly, since anxiety is after
all only a perception— of possibilities of anxiety.
Consequently it is very likely that the sense of
guilt produced by culture is not perceived as such
and remains to a great extent unconscious, or
comes to expression as a sort of uneasiness or dis-
content for which other motivations are sought.
The different religions at any rate have never over-
looked the part played by the sense of guilt in
civilization. What is more, they come forward
with a claim, which I have not considered else-
where,^ to save mankind from this sense of guilt,
which they call sin. We indeed have drawn our
conclusions, from the way in which in Christianity
this salvation is won — ^the sacrificial death of one
who therewith takes the whole of the common
guilt of all upon himself — ^about the occasion on
which this primal sense of guilt was first acquired,
that is, the occasion which was also the inception
of culture.*

It will not be very important, but it may be just
as well to go more precisely into the meaning of
certain words like super-ego, conscience, sense of
guilt, need for punishment, remorse, which we have
perhaps often used too loosely and in place of one
another. They all relate to the same situation,

1 I mean in The Future of an Ittunon.

* Totem und Tabu (1912).

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 127

but they denote difierent aspects of it. The super-
ego is an agency or institution in the mind whose
existence we have inferred : conscience is a function
we ascribe, among others, to the super-ego ; it
consists of watching over and judging the actions
and intentions of the ego, exercising the functions
of a censor. The sense of guilt, the severity of the
super-ego, is therefore the same thing as the rigour
of conscience ; it is the perception the ego has
that it is watched in this way, the ego’s apprecia-
tion of the tension between its strivings and the
standards of the super-ego ; and the anxiety that
lies behind all these relations, the dread of that
critical institution, the need for punishment, is
an instinctual manifestation on the part of the
ego, which has become masochistic imder the
influence of the sadistic super-ego, i.e. which has
brought a part of the instinct of destruction at
work within itself into the service of an erotic
attachment to the super-ego. We ought not to
speak of conscience before a super-ego is demon-
strable ; as to consciousness of guilt, we must
admit that it comes into being before the super-
ego, therefore before conscience. At that time it
is the direct expression of the dread of external
authority, the recognition of the tension between
the ego and this latter ; it is the direct derivative

128 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

of the conjQict between the need for parental love
and the urgency towards instinctual gratification,
and it is the thwarting of this urgency that pro-
vokes the tendency to aggression. It is because
these two different versions of the sense of guilt —
one arising from dread of the external and the
other from dread of the inner authority — are
superimposed one on the other that our insight
into the relations of conscience has been hampered
in so many ways. Remorse is a general term de-
noting the ego’s reaction under a special form of
the sense of guilt ; it includes the almost unaltered
sensory material belongmg to the anxiety that is
at work behind the sense of guilt ; it is itself a
punishment and may include the need for punish-
ment ; it too, therefore, may occur before conscience
has developed.

Further, it will do no harm for us to review once
more the contradictions which have confused us at
times during our enquiries. The sense of guilt, we
said at one point, was the consequence of uncom-
mitted aggressions; but another time and in
particular iu the case of its historical beginning,
the murder of the father, it was the consequence
of an aggression that was carried out. We also
found a way out of this difficulty. The develop-
ment of the inner authority, the super-ego, was

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 129

precisely what radically altered the whole situa-
tion. Before this, the sense of guilt coincided with
remorse; we observe, in saying this, that the term
remorse is to be reserved for the reaction after an
actual performance of an aggressive deed. After
this, the omniscience of the super-ego robbed the
distinction between intended aggressions and ag-
gressions committed of its significance ; a mere in-
tention to commit an act of violence could then
evoke a sense of guilt — ^as psycho-analysis has
found — as well as one which has actually been
committed — as all the world knows. The con-
‘flict of ambivalence between the two primal
instincts leaves the same impress on the psycho-
logical situation, irresx>ective of the change that
has taken place in this. A temptation arises to
look here for an explanation of the mystery of the
varying relation between the sense of guilt and
consciousness. The sense of guilt which is due to
remorse for an evil deed must always have been
conscious ; that due to a perception of an evil
impulse could have r^ained unconscious. But
it caimot be as simple as that : the obsessional
neurosis contradicts it emphatically. The second
contradiction was that the aggressive energy with
which one imagined the super-ego to be endowed
was, according to one view, merely a continuation

130 CrVIUZATlOM AND ITS DISCONTENTS

of the punitive energy belonging to external
authority, preserved within the mind ; whereas
according to another view it consisted, on the con-
trary, of aggressive energy originating in the self,
levelled against this inhibiting authority but not
allowed to discharge itself in actions. The first
view seaned to accord better with the history of
the sense of guilt, the second with the theory of it.
More searching reflection has resolved this appar-
ently irreconcilable contradiction almost too com-
pletely ; what remained as essential and common
to both was that in both cases we were dealing
with an aggression that had been turned inward.
Clinical observation, moreover, really permits us
to distinguish two sources for the aggressiveness
we ascribe to the super-ego, each of which in any
given case may be operating predominantly, but
which usually are both at work together.

This, I think, is the place to suggest that a
proposal which I previously put forward as a pro-
visional assumption should be taken in earnest.
In the latest analytical literature ^ a predilection
has been shown for the view that any kind of
privation, any thwarted instinctual gratification,
results in a heightening of the sense Of guilt, or

1 In partacnlar, in contributions by Ernest Jones, Susan
Isaacs, Melanie Klein ; also, as I understand, in those of Reik
■iiH Alexander.

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I3I

may do so. I believe one obtains a great simplifica-
tion of theory if one regards this as valid for
the aggressive instincts, and that little will be
found to contradict this assumption. How then
is it to be explained d3mamically and economically
that a heightening of the sense of guilt should
appear in place of an unfulfilled erotic desire ?
This can surely only happen in a roundabout way :
the thwarting of the erotic gratification provokes
an access of aggressiveness against the person who
interfered with the gratification, and then this
tendency to aggression in its turn has itself to
be suppressed. So then it is, after all, only the
aggression which is changed into guilt, by being
suppressed and made over to the super-ego. I am
convinced that very many processes will admit of
much simpler and clearer explanation if we re-
strict the findings of psycho-analysis in respect of
the origin of the sense of guilt to the aggressive
instincts. Reference to the clinical material here
gives us no unequivocal answer, because, according
to our own h3q)Othesis, the two kinds of instincts
hardly ever appear in a pure form, unmixed with
each other ; but the investigation of extreme cases
would probably point in the direction I anticipate.
I am tempted to extract our first advantage from
this narrower conception by appl5dng it to the

132 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

repression-process. The symptoms of neurosis, as
we have learnt, are essentially substitutive gratifi-
cations for unfulfilled sexual wishes. In the course
of our analytic work we have found to our surprise
that perhaps every neurosis masks a certain amount
of imconsdous sense of guilt, which in its turn
reinforces the symptoms by exploiting them as
punishment. One is now inclined to suggest the
following statement as a possible formulation :
when an instinctual trend undergoes repression,
its libidinal elements are transformed into symp-
toms and its aggressive components into a sense of
guilt. Even if this statement is only accurate as
an approximation it merits our interest.

Some readers of this essay, too, may be under
the impression that the formula of the struggle
between Eros and the death instinct has been re-
iterated too often. It is supposed to characterize
the cultural process which evolves in humanity;
but it has been related also to the development of
the individual, and besides this, is supposed to have
revealed the secret of organic Ufe in general. It
becomes necessary for us to examine the relation
of these three processes to one another. Now, the
repetition of the same formula is vindicated by the
consideration that the cultural processes both in
humanity and in the development of an individual

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I33

are life-processes; consequently they must both
partake of the most universal characteristic of
life. On the other hand, evidence of the presence
of this universal characteristic does not help us
to discriminate, unless it is further narrowed
down by special qualifications. We can there-
fore set our minds at rest only if we say that
the cultural process is the particular modification
rmdergone by the life-process under the influence
of the task set before it by Eros and stimulated
by Ananke, external necessity ; and this task is
that of uniting single human beings into a larger
unity with libidinal attachments between them.
When, however, we compare the cultural process
in hiunanity with the process of development or
upbringing in an individual human being, we shall
conclude without much hesitation that the two
are very similar in nature, if not in fact the same
process applied to a different kind of object. The
civilizing process in the human species is naturally
more of an abstraction than the development of
an individual, and therefore harder to apprehend
in concrete terms, nor should the discovery of
analc^es be pushed to extremes ; but in view of
the similar character of the aims of the two pro-
cesses — ^in one the incorporation of an individual
as a member of a group and in the other the creation

134 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

of a single group out of many individuals — ^the
similarity of the means employed and of the results
obtained in the two cases is not surprising. In
view of its exceptional importance, we must no
longer postpone mention of one feature differentiat-
ing the two processes. The development of the
individual is ordered according to the programme
laid down by the pleasure-principle, namely, the
attainment of happiness, and to this main objective
it holds firmly ; the incorporation of the individual
as a member of a community, or his adaptation
to it, seems like an almost unavoidable condition
which has to be filled before he can attain this
objective of happiness. If he could achieve it
without fulfilling this condition it would perhaps
be better. To express it differently, we may say :
individual development seems to us a product of
the interplay of two traids, the striving for happi-
ness, generally called ‘ egoistic ', and the impulse
towards merging with others in the community,
which we call ‘ altruistic ’. Neither of these de-
scriptions goes far beneath the surface. In indi-
vidual development, as we have said, the main
accent falls on the egoistic trend, the striving for
happiness ; while the other tendency, which may
be called the ‘ cultural ’ one, usually contents itself
with instituting restrictions. But thing s are differ-

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I35

ent in the development of culture : here far the
most important aim is that of creating a single
unity out of individual men and women, while the
objective of happiness, though still present, is
pushed into the background ; it almost seems as if
humanity could be most successfully united into
one great whole if there were no need to trouble
about the happiness of individuals. The process
of development in individuals must therefore be
admitted to have its special features which are
not repeated in the cultural evolution of humanity ;
the two processes only necessarily coincide in so
far as the first also includes the aim of incorporation
into the community.

Just as a planet circles round its central body
while at the same time rotating on its own axis, so
the individual man takes Ms part in the course of
humanity’s development as he goes on his way
through life. But to our duU eyes the play of
forces in the heavens seems set fast in a never-
varjdng scheme, though in organic life we can still
see how the forces contend with one another and
the results of the conflict change from day to day.
So in every individual the two trends, one towards
personal happiness and the other towards unity
with the rest of humanity, must contend with each
other ; so must the two processes of individual

136 CIVILIZATIOK AND ITS DISCONTENTS

and of cultural development oppose each other
and dispute the ground against each other. This
struggle between individual and society, however,
is not derived from the antagonism of the primal
instincts, Eros and Death, which are probably
irreconcilable ; it is a dissension in the camp of the
libido itself, comparable to the contest between the
ego and its objects for a share of the libido ; and
it does eventually admit of a solution in the indi-
vidual, as we may hope it will also do in the future
of civilization — ^however greatly it may oppress
the lives of individuals at the present time.

The analogy between the process of cultural
evolution and the path of individual development
may be carried further in an important respect.
It can be maintained that the community, too,
develops a super-^o, tmder whose influence cul-
tural evolution proceeds. It would be an enticing
task for an authority on human systems of culture
to work out this analogy in specific cases. I will
confine m3^self to pointing out certain striking
details. The super-ego of any given epoch of
civilization originates in the same way as that of
an individual ; it is based on the impression left
behind them by great leading personalities, men of
outstanding force of mind, or men in whom some
one hmnan tendency has developed in unusual

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I37

strength and purity, often for that reason very dis-
proportionately. In many instances the analogy
goes still further, in that during their lives — often
enough, even if not alwa5?s — such persons are ridi-
culed by others, lU-used or even cruelly done to
death, just as happened with the primal father who
also rose again to become a deity long after his death
by violence. The most striking example of this
double fate is the figure of Jesus Christ, if indeed
it does not itsdf belong to the realm of m5dhology
which called it into being out of a dim memory of
that primordial event. Another point of agree-
ment is that the cultural super-ego, just like that
of an individual, sets up high ideals and standards,
and that failure to fulfil them is punished by both
with ‘ anxiety of conscience ’. In this particular,
indeed, we come across the remarkable circum-
stance that the mental processes concerned here are
actually more familiar to us and more accessible to
consciousness when they proceed from the group
than they can be in the individual. In the latter,
when tension arises, the aggressions of the super-
ego voicing its noisy reproaches are all that is
perceived, while its injunctions themselves often re-
main unconscious in the background. If we bring
them to the knowledge of consciousness we find
that they coincide with the demands of the pre-

138 CIVILIZATIOM AMD ITS DISCONTENTS

vafling cultural super-ego. At this point the two
processes, that of the evolution of the group and
the devdopment of the indivudual, are always
firmly mortised together, so to speak. Conse-
quently many of the effects and properties of the
super-ego can be more easily detected through its
operations in the group than in the individual.

The cultiunl super-ego has elaborated its ideals
and erected its standards. Those of its demands
which deal with the relations of human beings to
one another are comprised under the name of
ethics. The greatest value has at all times been
set upon s}^tems of ethics, as if men had expected
them in particular to achieve something especially
important. And ethics does in fact deal pre-
dominantly with the point which is easily seen to
be the sorest of all in any scheme of civilization.
Ethics must be regarded therefore as a thera-
peutic effort : as an endeavour to achieve some-
thing through the standards imposed by the super-
ego which had not been attained by the work of
civilization in other ways. We already know — ^it
is what we have been discussing — that the ques-
tion is how to dislodge the greatest obstacle to
civilization, the constitutional tendency in men to
aggressions against one another ; and for that veiy
reason the commandment to love one's neighbour

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS 139

as onesdi — ^probably the most recent of the cul-
tural super-ego’s demands — ^is especially interest-
ing to us. In our investigations and our therapy
of the neuroses we cannot avoid findin g fault with
the super-ego of the individual on two counts : in
commanding and prohibiting with such severity it
troubles too little about the happiness of the ego,
and it fails to take into account sufficiently the
difficulties in the way of obeying it — ^the strength
of instinctual cravings in the id and the hard-
ships of external environment. Consequently in
our therapy we often find ourselves obliged to do
battle with the super-ego and work to moderate
its demands. Exactly the same objections can
be made against the ethical standards of the cul-
tural super-ego. It, too, does not trouble enough
about the mental constitution of human beings ;
it enjoins a command and never asks whether or
not it is possible for them to obey it. It presumes,
on the contrary, that a man’s ego is psychologically
capable of an3dhing that is required of it — ^that his
ego has unlimi ted power over his id. This is an
error ; even in so-called normal people the power
of controlling the id cannot be increased beyond
certain limits. If one asks more of them, one pro-
duces revolt or neurosis in individuals or makes
them unhappy. The command to love our neigh-

140 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

hours as ourselves is the strongest defence there is
against human aggressiveness and it is a super-
lative example of the unpsychological attitude of
the cultural super-ego. The command is im-
possible to fulfil ; such an enormous inflation of
love can only lower its value and not remedy the
evil. Civilization pa}^ no heed to all this ; it
merely prates that the harder it is to obey the more
laudable the obedience. The fact remains that
an3rone who follows such preaching in the present
state of civilization only puts himself at a disad-
vantage beside all those who set it at naught.
What an overwhelming obstacle to civilization
aggression must be if the defence against it can
cause as much misery as aggression itself !
‘ Natural ’ ethics, as it is called, has nothing to
offer here beyond the narcissistic satisfaction of
thinking oneself better than others. The variety
of ethics that links itself with religion brings in at
this point its promises of a better future life. I
should imagine that as long as virtue is not re-
warded in this life ethics will preach in vain. I
too think it unquestionable that an actual change
in men’s attitude to property would be of more
help in this direction than any ethical commands ;
but among the Socialists this proposal is obscured
by new idealistic expectations disregarding human

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I4I

nature, which detract from its value in actual
practice.

It seems to me that the point of view which
seeks to follow the phaaomena of cultural evolu-
tion as manifestations of a super-ego promises
to yield still further discoveries. I am commg
quickly to an end. There is one question, how-
ever, which I can hardly ignore. If the evolution
of civilization has such a far-reaching similarity
with the development of an individual, and if the
same methods are employed in both, would not
the diagnosis be justified that many systems of
civilization— or epochs of it — ^possibly even the
whole of humanity — ^have become * neurotic ’ under
the pressure of the civilizing trends ? To analytic
dissection of these neuroses therapeutic recom-
mendations might foUow which could claim a
great practical interest. I would not say that such
an attempt to apply psycho-analysis to civilized
society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitless-
ness. But it behoves us to be very careful, not to
forget that after all we are dealing only with
analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with
men but also with concepts, to drag them out
of the region where they originated and have
matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses,
moreover, will be confronted by a special diffi-

142 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

culty. In the neurosis of an individual we can
use as a starting-point the contrast presented to
us between the patient and his environment which
we assume to be ' normal No such background
as this would be available for any society similarly
affected ; it would have to be supplied in some
other way. And with r^ard to any therapeutic
application of our knowledge, what would be the
use of the most acute analjrsis of social neuroses,
since no one possesses power to compel the com-
munity to adopt the therapy ? In spite of all
these difficulties, we may expect that one day
someone will venture upon this research into the
pathology of civilized communities.

For various reasons, it is very far from my
intention to express any opinion concerning the
value of human civilization. I have endeavoured
to guard myself against the enthusiastic partiality
which believes our civilization to be the most
precious thing that we possess or could acquire,
and thinks it must inevitably lead us to undreamt-
of heights of perfection. I can at any rate listen
without taking umbrage to those critics who aver
that when one surveys the aims of civilization and
the means it emploj^, one is bound to conclude that
the whole thing is not worth the effort and that in
the end it can only produce a state of things which

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS I43

no individual will be able to bear. My impartiality
is all the easier to me since I know very little
about these things and am sure only of one thing,
that the judgements of value made by mankind
are immediately determined by their desires for
happiness ; in other words, that those judgements
are attempts to prop up their illusions with argu-
ments. I could understand it very well if anyone
were to point to the inevitable nature of the
process of cultural development and say, for in-
stance, that the tendency to institute restrictions
upon sexual life or to carry humanitarian ideals
into effect at the cost of natural selection is a
developmental trend which it is impossible to avert
or divert, and to which it k best for us to submit
as though they were natural necessities. I know,
too, the objection that can be raised against this :
that tendencies such as these, which are believed
to have insuperable power behind them, have often
in the history of man been thrown aside and re-
placed by others. My courage fails me, therefore,
at the thought of rising up as a prophet before my
fellow-men, and I bow to their reproach that I have
no consolation to ofier them ; for at bottom this is
what they all demand — ^the frenzied revolutionary
as passionately as the most pious believer.

The fateful question of the human species seems

144 CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS

to me to be whether and to what extent the ctd-
tnral process devdoped in it will succeed in master-
ing the derangements of communal life caused by
the humah instinct of aggression and self-destruc-
tion. In this connection, perhaps the phase through
which we are at this moment passing deserves
special interest. Men have brought their powers of
subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that
by using them they could now very easily exter-
minate one another to the last man. They know
this — whence arises a great part of their current un-
rest, their dejection, thdr mood of apprehension.
And now it may be expected that the other of the
two ‘ heavenly forces ', eternal Eros, will put forth
his strength so as to tnaintain himsftlf alongside
of his equally immortal adversary.